Rate My Renovation Was £50k spent doing up student digs worth it?

Moroccan travels inspire bright and bold ongoing upgrade, finds Samantha Partington

When Gemma Gear and partner Tom Reeves viewed a former student digs in Worthing, West Sussex, as their next fixer-upper they looked beyond the shabby décor, Artex walls and dimly lit kitchen.

What they saw instead was the opportunity to give the three- bedroom Victorian property back some of its former character and fill it with light and colour inspired by their Moroccan travels.

Eight months on and half of the rooms have been transformed with white walls and bold splashes of colour, natural wood floors strewn with patterned rugs, tiled floors, raffia wall art and rattan lampshades.

Telegraph Money asked Chloe Beharrell, interior design guru at Host Architecture & Design, to give her verdict on the makeover.

Bought for £450,000, the renovation of a shared property that previously housed five students is not a project for the faint-hearted. Gear, 31, an interior stylist by trade, took the challenges in her stride.

“The original Victorian features drew our eye,” says Gear, a creative freelancer who works under the name “That’s So Gemma”.

“There were still beautiful hallway corbels, a spindle banister and a ceiling rose in the living room. But much of its character had been stripped away.”

Topping the list of eyesores the couple encountered when they got the keys last October were sink units and white-tiled splash backs in each of the five rooms that had been used as bedrooms. The house came with two separate shower rooms located side by side, a boarded-up window and heavy fire doors in every room.

Staying true to the property’s Victorian heritage, Gear and Reeves, 33, an accountant, have reinstalled fireplaces back into the rooms where chimney breasts had been plastered over.

“My main inspiration comes from Morocco. I’ve been a couple of times and I’m already planning a third trip,” she says. “For me, travelling somewhere is the best way to get inspired.”

One of the couple’s favourite rooms is their transformed kitchen and dining space, which isn’t just a room for cooking, but for entertaining, relaxing and working too. It’s really important to us that our kitchen is a multi-functional space that serves different purposes at different times of the day.”

To add more light to the previously dark kitchen the couple replaced the window with bi-fold doors, which she bought from Now Aluminium for £2,895 leading out into their garden.

Gear designed the kitchen around the style and colour of her cabinetry which came from Benchmarx Kitchens. The couple were offered a second- hand range cooker at a knock- down price from their friends and had the doors sprayed to match the colour of the cabinets.

Her Moroccan accents include the colourful floor tiles which cost about £1,200 from Your Tiles and her green, striped splashback from Claybrook Studio priced at about £450.

Moroccan interiors are characterised as a blend of patterns, bold colour choices and multiple textures.

Chloe Beharrell, of Host Architecture & Design, says: “When I think of Moroccan design the patterns that come to mind are generally floral or geometric and mainly used with tiles. You’d also expect to see the use of lanterns and low ambient lighting.”

The fire door leading out of the kitchen was replaced with a pine door. Gear aged the pine using Liberon Black Bison Wax Polish in the antique pine colour.

Beharrell adds: “Gemma has been really clever with the use of colour and pattern to bring the space together. The pine door ageing hack is great.”

To the right of the pine door had previously been a pantry cupboard, a space Gear wanted to make better use of. Through the door on the other side of the wall was an under-stairs cupboard housing a gas meter so the couple remodelled both cupboards into a quirky downstairs lavatory. With its pink neon lightning bolt fitted to the wall and a Terrazzo basin from Morris Concrete Designs, the formerly dead space is unrecognisable.

“I absolutely love what Gemma has done here,” says Beharrell.

When the couple’s transformation is complete, they expect it to be valued in the region of £650,000 based on the sale of a similar property to theirs which had received a full makeover.

Beharrell says: “The property’s well designed interior will make it stand out, attracting more attention and generating greater interest. The visually appealing interior will give it a competitive edge and help it sell or rent more quickly.”