Finding the light: how a dark and dreary Victorian terrace house was turned into a bright family home - adding 200sq ft of living space

Once dark and dreary, this Victorian terrace house - with ceilings so oppressively low that head bumping was a constant threat - has been transformed into a light, stylish family home by using a combination of radical structural change and close attention to detail.

When Emilie Mauran, founder and managing director of EMR Architecture first saw the house off Munster Road it was a depressing proposition.

The owner had bought it as a home for herself, her young daughter and their live-in au pair but although at 1,884sq ft the four-bedroom house was a good size, it just didn’t work.

“The house had probably not been refurbished for 25 years,” says home design expert Mauran. “It was not in a terrible state but it did not work very well in terms of circulation, and it was really lacking in light.”

The biggest problem was the kitchen. It had already been extended – badly – and Mauran needed to redo the work.

The roof of the original side return extension to the kitchen sloped so steeply, it was impossible to stand up at its lowest section.

Light, or the lack of it, was another big issue. With one window and a door opening to the back garden, this kitchen was downright dingy.

Brave structural changes were needed and because the neighbours had also built out their side return, Mauran was able to get planning permission to raise the party wall between the two properties to almost 10ft.

She also won permission to have the kitchen extended back by six and a half feet.

“The back of the house was in such bad condition that we took it down completely,” says Mauran. “We also lowered the kitchen floor, increasing the ceiling height from 2.3m [7.5ft] to 2.7m [almost 9ft] which made a massive difference, and we added a large sliding door … [leading out to the garden] …to enhance the light.”

Although the project made a small garden smaller, Mauran felt it made no real difference to the quality of the space.

“It is more like a courtyard than a garden, but you can still have a barbecue or have a drink outside,” she says.

When it came to choosing finishes the owner was keen on a marble work surface and chose a warm grey called Moonrock.

“Marble is very high maintenance and we usually advise people to have a quartz work top with a marble splashback,” says Mauran. “But she loves marble, and she is very meticulous and was prepared to be very careful with it.”

Mauran designed the kitchen cabinets herself, getting them made up by a carpenter, painted in tonal shades of grey and green, and accessorised with handles from Buster + Punch.

The concrete-effect floor tiles are from European Heritage.

Mauran advises that when choosing floor tiles it is best to go big, at least 120cm square, to achieve a seamless look, or to go for small cement tiles to create a pattern. Medium-sized tiles, she feels, are simply the worst of both worlds.

Outside, the crumbling brick garden walls were rendered.

Mauran suggested they be painted grey rather than white, because fresh white exterior paint needs redoing every year. Grey is more forgiving and works wonderfully as a backdrop for greenery.

Upstairs the first floor had three small bedrooms and a single bathroom.

Mauran incorporated the two front rooms into a generous, en suite master bedroom.

The room is calm, simple and chic, with white walls and a monochrome bathroom, created using tiles from European Heritage and Fired Earth, plus fittings from Alternative Bathrooms.

At the back of the house the remaining bedroom was incorporated with the family bathroom to create a second en suite, while a “pod” extension above the kitchen provides a spare room.

More structural work was required right at the top of the house to tweak the old loft extension.

“The ceiling heights were very low in the loft, too, so we decided to lower the floors there to make the space more usable,” says Mauran.

The loft, now a dreamy bedroom for a little girl, is painted soft pink and lit by a series of skylights.

The project added just over 200sq ft to the house, which now measures 2,088sq ft.

It was completed in 2018 at a cost, including VAT and professional fees, of £550,000 or £263 per square foot. This is about average for a full-scale renovation.

And while the market hasn’t risen enough in the interim to cover the costs, the owner’s thinking was that creating a forever home for a family unit was simply priceless.