Perfect extensions: a double-height glass box more than doubled the value of this modern family home in Chiswick

Planners don’t often make people put more glass into a glass box, especially in a conservation area.

But it happened to Elizabeth Ashley, a consultant anaesthetist at Barts, and her husband Brendan Bracey, 59, also a consultant, when they put a bold, double-height glass extension on the back of their four-storey 1900s terrace house in Chiswick.

It isn’t the first time that Ashley, 50, has made home improvements: “I love doing it — my husband goes along with me — and I’m a big fan of Elle Deco.” She adds that her father is one of those people who can make anything, so she grew up in his can-do, positive aura.

She bought her first home, in Birmingham, when she was 19 and did it up throughout in Laura Ashley.

In 1994, after she qualified as a doctor, she bought a mansion flat in Barons Court and decorated that in sisal and taupe.

She met Bracey in 1995 and they bought a small Victorian terrace house in Fulham: “I Farrow & Balled that one, and sold it.”

Their next buy was a Seventies modern cube in Chiswick, designed by Michael Manser. “The morning we moved in, I hated it.” Nevertheless, Ashley worked her magic, putting in a long vertical window and cherry wood floors with a glass section.

The couple married in 2007 and two years later Ashley spotted a big house for sale through Foxtons. On the market at £2 million, this was a house to stay in. It had a half-basement and three floors above. The roomy upper levels were well decorated, with new shutters, parquet floors and bathrooms, all of which they kept.

BANISHING THE GLOOM

The basement, however, leading through tired French windows to a patio and mature walled garden, had a Seventies style and felt like servants’ quarters. Off a long hall led a gloomy diner at the front and a small, quarry-tiled kitchen at the back, with dull units and a butler sink. It was dark and damp.

“But the moment I walked in, I wanted it,” Ashley declares. The owners were keen to sell, and a deal was done.

Ashley had big plans to open up the basement and add a dramatic double-height glass extension. She’d saved a picture from a magazine of one with an unusual guillotine window that had three vast panels which slid vertically, rather than horizontally.

But such major structural changes had to wait two years while they raised funds. “My husband is more risk averse.” Then in spring 2012, Ashley visited friends who had done up their home. They recommended Cross Harris Architects, the young central London practice they’d used.

Ashley went round with her glass box picture and Dan Harris produced the drawings that went to the planners.

In that first version, the wall of the box facing the neighbours was brick, and it had a solid top, to help with privacy. Surprisingly, the planners demanded a glass top and glass side, to give their neighbours more light.

This makes the design much more radical, creating, as near as possible, a genuine, nearly invisible glass box, in which a massive Flos chandelier appears to dangle from the sky. Viewing the chandelier from the first-floor drawing room window, at eye level, is even more dramatic — and all the more wonderful for being so unexpected.

On the other side of the box, a glass balustrade opens into a modest new brick side extension, which holds a utility room below and an office above. Groovy pocket doors were added to divide front and back, plus a sleek white kitchen and island and a new bathroom, making the basement a tremendous space for entertaining.

The old dining room is now a Barbarella-fantasy sitting room, with a hanging bubble chair and a cowskin cube. Ashley’s mother helped with small style touches, covering cushions in Marimekko cloth, and grey ceramic floor tiles run through the whole space.

Not a single neighbour objected to their plans. Building began in July 2013 and was completed in summer 2014. Despite their high-pressure jobs, the couple survived with a fridge and microwave upstairs — though they say they aren’t sure they would do that again.

This major, soaring transformation is so delightful to be in that you wonder how they felt when they first saw it finished. But, as Ashley says, they had watched its progress day by day, so got used to the drama. Even so, “when the builders finally hung my bubble chair — then I was excited.”

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