Fortune favours the brave: how one couple created their dream home from an old Victorian wreck bought at auction

It is always wise to get a good look at a house you’ve seen in an auction catalogue and get a proper survey done before getting carried away in the saleroom. Chelsea Dixon and her husband Robert Bühler did neither.

The couple, who run an architectural design company, bought a Victorian terrace house in Shepherd’s Bush, west London in October 2015. The date is burned on their brains because it was just a few days after their son, Forest, was born.

The house was hideous. Built in the 1850s it had been carved into seven bedsits with squalid kitchenettes and loos, a drug den on the top floor and a wild, overgrown pond full of frogs. The place hadn’t been touched in 25 years and had damp. Yet when the gavel came down, Chelsea, 33, and Rob, 31, hadn’t even been through the front door.

Luckily for these two, fortune does indeed favour the brave, because they’ve turned that old wreck into a fantastic family home with a huge, sunny living room at the back of the flowing, wide and now long ground floor.

By extending across almost the full width of the back garden, the amazing kitchen-diner area is 22ft wide, with four full-height metal-framed sliding windows right across, and two huge metal-framed skylights above, all detailed black, that make the high, white space brilliantly light.

It’s the setting for a bold marble kitchen, a French range and a huge French mirror, set off by lots of carefully chosen modern art. There is a real modern-French, chic feel here, which continues through the rest of the property, with its walnut floors and Mediterranean-style garden.

THE COUPLE FOR THE JOB

Chelsea and Rob’s potentially risky bid had sound foundations. Chelsea “grew up on a building site”. Her parents did up one house after another and her father, who’d run a kitchen design company, is a serious hobby carpenter. Chelsea studied drama in London but while her peers waited tables to survive, she worked for an estate agent.

She met Rob when he was at architecture school. They hadn’t been renting for long in Shepherd’s Bush when a friend mentioned a maisonette for sale. The next day they went to look, bought the place, put an extra floor on top and rented it out. Then they bought two Edwardian purpose-built maisonettes, got married and moved into one while they did up the other.

Chelsea, it seems, had inherited her parents’ passion for property and when she became pregnant she didn’t put the brakes on. In hospital waiting for Forest to arrive, she was scrolling through an auction catalogue when she spotted a house in a wide street with flowering cherry trees.

A few days later, back at home with the new baby, she remembered it was auction day. “Rob and I hadn’t even discussed the house,” she laughs, “but I asked him to go along. A bit later he rang up and said, ‘Oh my God, I’ve just bought it.”’

It was a huge financial leap. It took a long time to finalise the sale due to having to sort out the numerous tenants, but the couple used the time to think really hard about what they would do to the house. The mahogany staircase had ornate spindles, a big chunk missing and was almost collapsing, but they decided to restore it at any cost. This was wise, because it’s really beautiful.

They also repaired cornices and put in new fire surrounds where old ones were gone. And adding a big space at the back that would flow right through from the front drawing room with its high ceilings, was a must.

The planners liked their ideas, so gutting began in autumn 2016. “Builders love knocking things down,” Chelsea observes. Forty skips later all the old flats, including seven kitchens, seven bathrooms and endless abandoned furniture, had disappeared. Chelsea and Rob were down to a shell.

Putting back beautiful solid wood floors; having cornices made or buying new ones; using marble or, for floors, porcelain imitation, took time and care. Chelsea’s father lovingly made the kitchen, the library, dramatic double doors to the hall and the dressing room cabinetry. The couple designed some bespoke furniture.

For the rest, Chelsea did endless sourcing while Rob oversaw the designs, architecture and build. They also found time to design for other people, and to have a daughter, Vada, who’s now a few months old.

COOL, PERFECT WINE STORE

A clever idea was transforming a former path at the side into a wine storage room. With a pretty floor of painted concrete tiles, it’s cool and perfect.

Throughout the house, they’ve kept a clean palette of white walls with a few off-black ones for contrast, wood floors and non-allergenic sisal on the stairs, as Chelsea is allergic to carpet. Striking use of mirrors, paintings and quality accessories, plus a few bold colours, brings the stylish look together.

It’s almost impossible to imagine how horrible this glamorous house once looked. But what has been achieved here shows that playing out a strong gut feeling — if you’ve got the finances in place — can really work.

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