Stripping Wallpaper

I bought a wallpaper steamer. I bought scrapers and rubble bags and dust sheets. I naively assumed the wallpaper would just leap off the wall. Ha! Not likely. The shiny paint when it gets hot from the steam is like stringy cheese, or mutant’s slime depending on the colour of paint.

It stretched out, clinging to that sodding wall as if it was being ripped from its mothers arms. And then underneath all this was the wood chip paper that as my daughter said, ‘looks like the old fashioned B&B’s we’ve stayed in on the Isle of Man’ (harsh – but fair) which also had no interest in leaving the wall – and then under that was the 70’s floral with a light foam surface – and then plasterboard. Not sealed, just straight onto the plasterboard. So, impossible to remove with out damaging. Waaaww. It was such hot work that I couldn’t actually see out of my glasses, they kept steaming up! And them the steamer would overheat. Below is about two days work – my fingernails were more effective than the scraper! I gave up.

Oh my god, now I understand why decorators charge what they do.

A few days later when the wardrobes were being removed – yes, they are all gone, *do a little dance* – I discovered that underneath the wallpaper in my room (a very interesting collection of 80’s textured plaster effect in orange and a floral sprig with a blue background – and the lovely feature wall of chocolate and silver blooms) was grey lime plaster. Isn’t it sad when something as mundane as grey plaster is exciting? I got excited. I started pulling off that paper and it just fell into my arms. It was meant to be.

I got the steamer out again but discovered that a wet sponge and patience was actually more effective – and much less hot! I developed a technique: slide the scraper under the top layer of paper, removing the shiny paint, strip that off, wet the area exposed. Move to another spot and do the same thing, go back the first place and wet the area down again then, attack! Lo and behold it came off cleanly and easily! I am now completely hooked. A friend of mine said he loved stripping wallpaper, which I thought was a bonkers thing to say. Who could ever love something like this? But oh my, when you get good results, it’s fantastic!

And exposing that plaster has completely changed how I’m planning on decorating my bedroom. I’m going to keep the plaster exposed. All it needs is filling, patching, sanding and sealing. Hello, rough luxe! Alright, you might just have to bear with me on this.

And, you will have noticed that there is a big patch of pink plaster where the fireplace was taken out, so there is a bit a remedial painting to do.

I actually do have decorators on site at the moment. They’re doing the top rooms – including the study (which has more wood chip paper covered with shiny paint) and a beeoootiful mango-custard coloured floor! My word, were these people colour blind?? Who ever would look at the colour and say ‘it’s perfect’? but, again that has changed the way I’m going to decorate that room. I’ll paint the floor and put one of the rugs I currently have up there.

So, already I’m making changes that respond directly to what the house is giving up.

And here is the first bedroom – of the wood chip over 70’s floral foam topped paper – lined and ready for decorating.

The front bedroom is ready too, so the decorators will finish these two rooms this week and then I’ll get the electrician back to do the second fix.

This is the point that you realise it is worth spending the money on getting someone to do the lining for you (and in this case the stripping too.) Would I have persevered if I’d been living in the house already? Given that this was my first experience of stripping wallpaper in a house that has only had surface decorating done in the last (at least) 20 years, probably not. I was too worried about damaging the plasterboard and thus making the whole thing much more difficult to sort out. It’s taken three decorators three days to do this – (8am-4pm.) I imagine that it would have taken me a week to do each room and I can’t hang wallpaper, so I’d still have had to get someone in to do it. The mess is quite fantastic, currently we’ve removed about ten rubble bags of paper waste from these three rooms alone. I’ve also cleared four from my room, so if I’d been living in the house, this level of refurbishment would have been very invasive. Obviously if you move into a property as soon as your purchase completes, this is something you have no choice about, but these are the kinds of things that sour a house move pretty quickly and it really pays to consider what level of refurbishment you think you can cope with. This is just re-decorating and it’s been hard work. If you hate disruption, maybe a house that needs work done to it isn’t for you.

Next, I need to contact the carpet fitter…

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Let’s Start at the Top

After I got the keys, the first couple of visits to the house in Ramsgate were about taking lots of measurements and coming to grips with the fact that it wasn’t quite as I remembered it at the rear of the house…

While I was waiting for the purchase to complete I planned all kinds of projects that would turn the house into a gem. I really love stripped plaster and exposed brick, I’d want some of those. I love painted floors, I’d want some of those. I love bold wallpapers and I have a thing for vintage lighting, I’d want some of those too – and I got excited about having all my things out of storage again; my big dining table and church chairs, my chandeliers and armoire, a wicker sofa and gardening tools. Oh, I had a lovely time spending money that wasn’t going to stretch quite far enough to do everything on the list… So the reality of that first visit shattered a few of my lovely dreams.

This is the breakfast room (and will be my studio) and immediately to the right is the kitchen, the weak spot of the entire building – it’s dark and has no connection to the garden – but I’m not all that bothered because the first time I saw the place I knew that I would want to do a kitchen extension to improve this. I had thought that as a temporary measure I could slightly reconfigure, move the sink and put in french doors, but I hadn’t even spotted that the ground and floor levels don’t line up. That’s what happens when you view a house in the dead of winter and it’s too cold to spend any real time outside poking into the positions of windows.

Inside, the kitchen window is 900mm above the floor, outside the kitchen window is 400mm above the ground. Naturally this is causing issues with damp – which would obviously be solved by doing the extension – but there will be a lot of soil to move and groundworks are expensive; this is not something that can be done as a temporary measure.

Now you can see my dilemma. This area at the rear of the kitchen is really unlovely – and when I first viewed that didn’t concern me at all – but if you’d asked me a few weeks later what the rear of the house looked like, I’d have said it was the original brick. Clearly it’s not, but I didn’t even notice – and I’m used to looking at buildings with a critical eye. And what about that garden gnome?? Is he a keeper?? They left so much junk behind.

So, how best to spend the money that I do have right now? I’ve decided I’m starting at the top and working my way down. With both children abroad from October I realised that if they moved to a house that had had nothing done to it, they’d go away and not even know what their bedrooms looked like. That pulled me up quickly, they wouldn’t even know what they were coming home to – because the rooms are not staying as they are now.

The children’s bedrooms are at the top of the house, they’ll have their own study (the fourth bedroom) which will have a daybed for friends to use when they stay over. All of these rooms came to us with fitted wardrobes that I was just never going to keep, never ever! So, they have been dismantled and will be discarded. I tried listing them online for sale – no takers. I tried offering them to a charity, they didn’t want them either. Take note, if you are buying flat pack furniture, no-one will want them when you no longer want them. There is no resale value and you will have to pay to get them removed. Yay, me. Yes, I could pay the council to remove them, but I’m not able to get them out of the house on the prescribed day by myself, so this is not an option either.

Next will be the bathrooms and my bedroom. The bathrooms are a total reconfigure as they’ve carved up the rear bedroom on the first floor to create an ensuite and family bathroom. The line to the far left of the shot is the wall they’ve added to create the ensuite, the bathroom is L-shaped. It’s badly thought out and awkward, so this will be an invasive process but not completely mad as the pipework is all in place. What they haven’t done is put in an extractor fan in the family bathroom. This is now a regulation for any bathroom refurb, so there will be re-wiring to do and in the course of this whole process each floor will be re-wired and linked when we get to the bottom of the house and do the kitchen extension.

Just in case you’re now thinking I’m completely crazed and have taken on a wreck, there are plenty of areas in the house that are simply decorative updates. I’m not keen on shiny paint on walls, but the stairs, landings, front room and my bedroom only need a refresh and I will likely tackle them myself. I have light fittings for all of them already and with those small changes this house will take on a new identity.

In fact, I’ve already started… in my room. More on that another time.

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Finding my Home

I made the decision a few years back that when the children finished school I was going to head to the coast. I wasn’t going to pine for the days when my children were small and school was the focus, no if they could be off having adventures, then so could I!

But then I got stuck, which part of the actual coastline did I mean? I’d looked at properties in Rye and if you’ve followed the blog for a while you’ll know I came very close to buying there. In the last year the property market down in that part of East Sussex has really stalled and I got nervous first that there was very little I liked (and I would be settling for whatever I could get) and second that I would find it hard to sell on when I was ready to move. And what if I didn’t actually like living there? Then what?

So I started looking in Suffolk; I have family there, but property was moving so fast in that area that I never even got to view any of the properties I earmarked. And then I thought about Essex because I also have friends there – but my heart wasn’t really in that search and then someone suggested Kent, by which point my search area was so diverse that I couldn’t compare the specific properties objectively. Confused of Dulwich, please step up!

The only way forward was a very pragmatic process of defining what criteria I wanted for my new home. It had to be in a town – not a village – with beach access walking distance from the house. It had to have good transport links to London; nowhere further than 60-90 minutes from the centre of town. It had to have three or more bedrooms, it had to be spacious enough in the communal areas that I could have guests regularly so that the teenagers could arrive with a crowd and not cause a problem. It had to have outdoor space for the dog and I wanted it to be pretty. It had to have reasonable street parking and be walking distance to the train station. It had to be sound – no complete wrecks, I just didn’t have the budget for that – and in good enough decorative order that I could move in without doing works immediately. (This last one was flexible but what I really didn’t want was a property that needed to be modernised; they’re as costly as wrecks.)

Then I started to refine what that might mean for locations and Rye, my old favourite was right on the boundary distance wise. Suffolk was completely out because the coast is on a branch line from Ipswich and the areas I liked were driving distance from train stations. The Essex coast is the same. Brighton of course, is the most obvious choice because it’s only an hour by train, but I’ve never been that interested in living in Brighton, it’s a bit too hen and stag nights for me. So that was when Kent raised its head and lo and behold the high speed links to France travel right through Kent (Rye is accessed by the same line,) which suddenly made this part of the world more accessible and late last year I went on a recce to Ramsgate.

And what did I find?? A very nice little town, a bit scruffy but with a handful of lovely restaurants, cafes and shops, a Royal harbour that was the departure point of the Little Ships operation to Dunkirk in WWII, sandy beaches hugging the cliff face on which the town is built, very lovely housing stock and lots and lots of building work going on. Hmmm, for an interior designer that was interesting…

Then I looked on internet property listings and found that the prices in Ramsgate were within my budget – and there were some pretty houses for sale. I went down to stay for a weekend.

I had a really nice time.

I went back and viewed two houses. I had an offer accepted on the one I fell for and was so excited! But then it transpired that there were no consents for building works and the house was listed. It’s a criminal offence to alter a listed building without consent… So after a few weeks of watching the situation unravel and having to consider the possibility of being fined because of the sellers negligence, I pulled out.

So the search began again and this time, it all went through. I’m now the proud owner of a four bedroom house in Ramsgate with a big garden and – bonus – it’s not a listed building! Naturally I want to do work to it and as we’re not moving down for another six weeks I’m hoping to get a couple of rooms redecorated before the removal vans pull up outside.

Glass – The Great Divider

Ask anyone about what they think of glass used as a material or finish and you will get very divided opinions – traditionalists consider it too modern; modernists too minimal and up-cyclers too clean. It’s never going to tick every box but I think we can agree that one thing glass does fantastically is let light in. Earlier in the year I mentioned clients who I had ‘talked into’ putting a wall back in their downstairs living space, which had been carved up by an architect some 17 years ago and was now not meeting the family needs.

I persuaded them that a glass wall would allow the space to have an element of privacy as well as maintaining a connection throughout – it would allow the space to function as three independent areas while still being linked visually by the wall itself. Happily they loved the idea and we reconfigured the entire downstairs – moving the kitchen to the rear and creating two reception areas to the middle and front which the glass wall would enclose. The tv snug is the central space which takes advantage of the lower light levels and it is this area that is formed by the glass wall – but it the front room into the bay window that has really been transformed. Previously the kitchen, this space is now a grown up and relaxed place to sit and read or chat. It’s taken back a sense of the grandeur of the architecture (very high ceilings) without any of the stuffiness that some Victorian buildings seem to possess.

What it’s also done is allow us to re introduce the stairs – which had been consigned to a ‘coal chute’ by the architect in favour of over sized doors. It was so interesting to see how they used the space before the wall went back in – the middle area was the dining room and the furniture was against the wall, the kitchen was to the front with the units against the walls. The space was incredibly limited in what it could do and the architect had only added to this; the ‘space’ was only used for movement. And here’s the thing, if a building is already tall emphasising this will make the rooms feel narrow; when people walk through a space like this they follow pathways – even if there isn’t one – they don’t venture into the space because the height is telling them that it’s not generous enough for them to walk wherever they want.

People don’t trust space that they don’t understand. Weird but true – I’ve put walls back in before because the space (another downstairs) had been opened up completely and no-one ever used the middle of the room (the junction point between the original rooms) – ever. Just putting back in the piers where the walls ended and creating an opening with a column effect gave the entire downstairs a sense of structure and all of a sudden the space became more relaxed; it felt like it could breathe again.

With putting the glass wall in, the rooms now get walked into and around because the furniture is arranged across the space and not just along the walls. This makes the space more visually interesting and also more flexible – there are now two seating areas as well as the kitchen-diner. Nothing feels cramped but there is definitely more furniture in the space than there was before.

The interesting thing for me as a designer is how this space will look in 10-15 years time. Might they feel then that a solid wall would be more practical? It’s possible – and because of the way it’s been constructed, they could certainly do that, if they wanted. But think about glass internal walls in office spaces or hotels. It’s that element of curiosity that makes them interesting, the fact that you can glimpse what is happening 5 or 10 metres away adds a drama to an otherwise blank canvas. And so it is here, because the wall is also a window it both contains and disappears. Best of all, with the lights on, the furniture glows and the space looks a bit like a jewel box – or a glass bauble. Your every day solid wall doesn’t do that. So I’m willing to bet that because the wall is glass, it’ll still be looking good.

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From This – To This

After much hard work I can finally reveal the transformation that has undergone the flat I purchased in June. I’m thrilled – but it wasn’t without its stresses – I have learned many lessons as ‘the client!’

If anything progress was made more difficult by not having a buffer between client (me) and contractor. Reflecting on the process has given me a totally different understanding of my role as designer. I find it quite straightforward to be decisive for clients; for myself, not so much; the agony of not having quite finalised something and knowing that my indecision could potentially hold up the workforce. I never do that for a client!

When I viewed the flat and decided to buy it, it was a bland and ‘generic’ space; lots of cream and beige, very inoffensive (such a damning word!) What that really means is whoever did the initial design for the space sucked all of the individuality out of it and turned each flat in the block into an identikit replica. I genuinely believe that it is possible to create a space with personality without a high price tag, so this mass-produced look is one that feels like the designer has lost interest and isn’t actually invested in giving the end users an interior that a) looks good and b) functions well. All of the finishes were low cost – and after ten years looked a bit rough around the edges. It was light and spacious though and that was the element that sold it to me – as well as the location very close to the river and the sense of tranquility in an area that is quite heavily trafficked.

looking toward the front room

What I wanted for the flat was a look that had personality and warmth, I wanted to add more individuality and to create a space that related to a more design led aesthetic. I earmarked the ‘big ticket’ items (flooring, appliances, carpet and work surface) and decided to use finishes that would age well, I want to see if in ten years time the place still has a more considered feel to it. I don’t mind if the floor is a little scuffed and the carpet a little scruffy … in some spaces it is this lived in feel that adds to the success of the design. And this is my challenge to myself, how will the flat look when it’s been used for ten years?

So, what’s been the biggest lesson? A bespoke finish isn’t going to be quick, so I was unrealistic to think it would be achieved on a short refurb schedule.

I specced a herringbone wood floor – it took two weeks to fit. I specced hexagonal tiles for the bathroom – it took six days to tile two walls ( a space 1.70cm x 1.90cm!) Each straight edge (into the corners and trim) had to be cut, that was 200 cuts which took almost a full day. I specced black tap-ware for the bathroom and kitchen and due to changing specs I couldn’t get them without ordering from Italy and waiting for their summer hols to end, so no plumbing until the beginning of September. Needless to say the tap-ware isn’t black.

I got really frustrated with myself at having to have fall back options for the fall back options (the work surface is plan d!) and that meant the work force were critical of my choices – not that it was any of their business, but it dented my confidence – for a client they would never have questioned it. I discovered that the bedrooms were longer than the largest size of carpet (a 5 metre width) and so had to order nearly double the amount to finish them. I looked at ordering more wood herringbone but in terms of cost there was no saving and that would have added another ten days to the fitting dates (so additional labour costs) – the carpet went down in an hour and a half.

The most stressful part of the process was doing a job I don’t normally do and measuring the space for the tiles. Needless to say I miscalculated (in the teeny tiny bathroom) and ended up short – the handbasin wall short to be precise. I went back to the supplier to find that the whole shipment had gone to a developer and they weren’t getting more stock until September. ARGH. NO No no. The suppliers were amazing and tried to track down an alternative (which wasn’t quite the same colour white) and we had about a square metre to finish on one wall that would stand out like a sore thumb. I sent them a photo and effectively begged them to check the warehouse…THEN miraculously they found enough to finish our job just lurking somewhere in the back of their football stadium sized warehouse. What? The week before they had nothing left. How does that happen?? That was an awful week.

The thing I have learned from this as a designer is that it’s the build process that absorbs the lead times of the order schedule. We weren’t doing any building works, so there was no buffer between ordering and delivery. They guys needed everything on site immediately and for the most part we had an easy time with the delivery process, but some things we just didn’t allow for. The work surface for example. I was going to use a quartz (plan a) but the cost was way more than I expected (and I spec this for clients frequently) so we looked at Corian (plan b) and the colours weren’t what I wanted, so I looked at an acrylic surface (plan c) and found that as supply only it was more than the quartz when we factored in the labour costs. So I ended up settling – very halfheartedly – for a laminate. I have never specced laminate in my entire career as an interior designer. Who knew what a steep learning curve that would be! The width we needed wasn’t standard and it had to be ordered in. It took two weeks, which meant that the kitchen was the last room to be done; we had no running water for about four weeks, just a bucket under a stopcock. Joyous!

But it’s all over now and the place is being marketed for tenants. I’m also going to list it on Airbnb – let me know if you’d like to stay sometime!

Advice to Property Sellers

Finally, finally after thirteen months, I’m a property owner again. For those of you who don’t know, the one I now own was property number four and it seems appropriate for me to offer some insight into why this has been such a difficult process. Considering the property press is quick to say it’s a buyers market, why exactly did I have such a hard time getting back on the property ladder?

Purely from my perspective, I think it’s to do with the fact that the media seems to focus on the buyer. It’s the buyer who has to have finance in place, the buyer who has to arrange for a survey – and any other reports that need to be done – the buyer who pays the stamp duty and who has the bargaining power of pulling out of the transaction if they’re unhappy. It’s the buyer, therefore who causes the problems. Or is it?

My finance was in place; I sold my house last June. I have a great surveyor in London who can turn his report around in five days, I have a great building contractor who comes to viewings with me to keep me focused and not let my heart pull the strings. I trust the advice of my solicitor and know that she acts in my best interests and then it all falls apart again. So where is the weak link?

Property Number One had two commercial units attached to the title and the vendors renegotiated the leases with the tenants during the time that the property was marketed for sale without consulting their solicitors.

Property Number Two had an incomplete lease lodged at the Land Registry (even though it was share of freehold) and the vendor wouldn’t take the responsibility to rectify it.

Property Number Three had a short lease which needed extending (and I agreed to do this as part of the purchase) but wouldn’t allow me to contact the freeholders or negotiate with them on my behalf unless I paid them a ‘consideration.’

Property Number Four was bought in shared ownership so the title was only 75% in their name and I was told when my offer was accepted that they were in the process of buying the final 25% so that I would own full title. The owners took five months to sort this out!

In every case the vendor wasn’t ready. Their paperwork hadn’t been run past a solicitor to check if there were any outstanding issues. They hadn’t considered the time that this would take nor even if this would hold up the sale. And this is all before the opposite side (the buyer) gets involved. Remember, this has to be done whoever you sell to, it can’t be bypassed – because solicitors are trained to look for irregularities. They’re risk averse, if they’re unhappy with something, they will tell you they think it’s unwise to proceed. The old caveat emptor (buyer beware) still holds true, so if you move forward against their advice, on your head be it. It pays to read everything in the solicitors report carefully because this tells you who the energy supplier is, who the local authority is, who the alarm is maintained by, who the tv service is supplied by, who your landlord is – if the property is leasehold. All the nuts and bolts in one big file; it’s the paper version of the property you are buying and it’s all information supplied by the seller.

As a seller the person you have most contact with in the early phase is the estate agent contracted to market your property. And of course you pay them a commission for this, so they are keen to demonstrate their skill. There’s often a lot of contact to keep you updated about viewings feedback, to keep your spirits up if progress is slow and to adjust expectations if the offers are not quite at the level you hoped for. But – and it’s a big but, their advice doesn’t form any part of the legal contract between you and the buyer. This is the role of the solicitors. The estate agent brokers the deal to act as the negotiator between seller and buyer and once an offer’s been accepted, they’re there to keep the lines of communication open. That’s it.

As a seller if you’ve told the estate agents anything about the property that you’re uncertain about; this is interesting to them but it isn’t directed at the right person because they can’t instruct any further action. The person you should be discussing this with is your solicitor. And as a general rule of thumb if anything was an issue when you purchased the property – and wasn’t resolved by your solicitor as part of the purchase – it will still be an issue when you sell. It won’t have sorted itself out while you get on with the business of living there – IT WILL STILL BE AN ISSUE WHEN YOU SELL.

Very often I’ve heard friends agonise over the buyers of their property and how they’re mucking them around; making so many demands and asking for all kinds of things to be included in the sale. There’s certainly room for good manners in this process, but for the most part when the finance is in place and the reports have all been read, there’s nothing much for a buyer to do but wait. If they wait too long, they get frustrated (and that’s when all the demands creep in; they feel they’re owed some special treatment for being patient.) Sellers have to ask themselves if they could have done anything to reduce this.

The estate agents have a part to play in this too. As I discovered when I collected the keys to my new flat, they hadn’t realised the owners had never sold a property before, so they really didn’t have any idea what was expected of them. This is the big divide – if you don’t know the paperwork needs to be ready for the solicitor before they can start the conveyancing – who is responsible?

In most cases to sell a property we have first to buy; it pays to remember the agony of trying to secure the property in the first place. In other words, remember what it feels like to be the buyer. Would you have liked the person you bought from to be more amenable? Perhaps the question sellers should be asking themselves is, ‘how can I help my buyer with this purchase?’ If you really want to sell – no, if you are committed to selling – you’ll need to do just that.

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Simple Structures

There’s something so charming about miniatures and scaled down versions of everyday domestic products. I can’t say why I’m drawn to them but even something as simple as a miniature bottle will have me cooing, so I’ve got a bit of a confession, I have a thing for cottages.

While I recognise that I would quickly run out of space in a traditional farmhouse cottage, I just love that simple pentagon shape that kids draw when they’re asked what their house looks like. Of course, most houses don’t look remotely like that especially in the UK where much of the built environment is terraced and long rows of residential properties share walls with their neighbours. Nonetheless, we all know what that square with the triangle on top means – home – shelter and privacy; a refuge, a haven.

It is this same simple shape that gives agricultural buildings their reference point, pared back and stripped of any detail they make quite a statement of their silhouette. Picture the skyline with a stark building rising above it, projected against the setting sun. See what I mean? These simple shapes are powerful.

While on holiday recently in New Zealand I was really smitten with a number of homes that have taken their design references from their agricultural neighbours. The scale was modest and the rooflines key to the overall impact, but what these buildings achieved was the relationship between the surrounding countryside and the simple proportions of a cottage. I was charmed. And I took lots of pictures.

Set within an orcharding area in Hawkes Bay, this is a permanent residence and the building has more solidity with its pebble dashed walls than the other images. What they all have in common though is the honestly of the architecture; uncluttered shapes, simply expressed.

This is the only two storey example, but what I like so much about this one is the relationship between the roof lines and the way the materials chosen create areas of contrast.

These are both waterfront properties on the edge of Lake Taupo (and available for rent through bookabach.co.nz) I’ve walked past these properties so many times and have either not had a camera with me or been pushed for time, so it’s actually the first time I’ve ever seen the second place with its front gate open. To have so much privacy on what is often a very busy walk way – and then to reveal the view when they open it – the best of both worlds.

The modernity of these two is what appeals; the colour and the choice of materials is a very conscious expression of the architecture, considering steel and concrete are more often in the supporting role; (literally) here they take on a feature element.

Again a waterfront property in Lake Taupo, this cottage is built up to a retaining wall. From the other side, you have no idea that a building is tucked in below.

Where the view is undeniably the key ingredient, what I see with these homes is a connection between the past and the type of buildings that were used on a lakefront – boat sheds – the sister of agricultural buildings. They sit happily on the shoreline and ‘mind their own business.’ They don’t try and compete or relate to the landscape, what they do is offer the view as the focal point – they are there because of the location. Even more, they serve the age old purpose of providing shelter in a way that connects the past activities of buildings along the shoreline with moderns needs. Timeless.

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Another One Bites the Dust

This property – the third – was supposed to be the lucky one. It was supposed to be mine! And to be honest I really did want this one, but I didn’t get it. Why? It’s another long story.

When I first lived in London over twenty-five years ago I lived in a shared flat on the Fulham Road. There were 10 of us; it wasn’t exactly private. Or quiet. We shared everything and it was CHEAP, which made living in London affordable on a very low salary. It was also a fantastic flat in a fantastic location; you could hear the Household Cavalry trotting off from the stables to exercise in Hyde Park a couple of times a week.

I lasted there three months and then moved to leafy Putney… And it always stuck in my mind that if I had the chance to buy a property on the Fulham Road, I would go for it.

So after the warehouse disaster, I started looking in the areas I knew and this little, tired, gem of a flat on the Fulham Road just called my name. It hadn’t had anything done to it since the 90’s, it was just waiting to be taken in hand (by me) and given a new lease of life. So what was the catch? HA – you figured that out already, did you?

first floor flat

It needed its lease extended.

And that was going to cost. The agent mentioned this at the first viewing, so I did know I was going to have to pay for this and the agreed purchase price certainly accommodated the lease premium. I was happy to take that on, but things unraveled really quickly.

Within the first week of my offer being accepted I discovered that the sellers hadn’t had a leasehold survey done. What is this? Well, its jolly expensive is the first thing I should say. It’s a report done by a surveyor to set the value of the lease premium in relation to the value of the property and others of the same ‘type’ in the same area. Essentially the premium compensates the freeholder/landlord for loss of earnings (ground rent) but does not factor in things like the general condition of the building and certainly not the decorative order of the property. What we found was that the premium we’d been told was likely to be asked was a fabrication – though not a million miles from what was an accurate value – just more than I wanted to pay for a building that needs a fair bit of TLC – because the moment I became a leaseholder, I too would have a share of those costs.

With the advice of the surveyor and my solicitor I asked the sellers if they would consider extending the lease in their name – if I increased my purchase offer to cover the premium – so that it would be transferred to me as part of the sale. That way the whole process would be ‘friendly’, they already knew the freeholders and it would be a simple conversation between them to get an agreed price for the extension. Or so I thought. They would only agree to doing this if I paid them a consideration – which they would split with me if the premium was less than what was agreed between us. Hmm. And then I got a really weird call from the agent to tell me that they could get more for the flat with the lease extended, if they remarketed it. Hang on, I was buying it, it wasn’t being remarketed. Was it?

From that moment things got nasty. The sellers refused to talk to the freeholder on my behalf, they would only allow us to start the lease extension after exchange of contracts – so at the point I owned the property and deposits had changed hands – and they kept pushing for me to agree to their terms. I got twice weekly phone calls from the agent, to see ‘how I was getting on.’ One of them left me shaking. So after three weeks of this I couldn’t take it anymore and withdrew my offer.

That was nearly three weeks ago and more pieces of the puzzle have revealed themselves, but the bottom line is that the sellers wanted more money for the flat than the market was prepared to pay. The place had been for sale since March of 2016 and they hadn’t accepted any offers before mine. Somehow in the process of accepting my offer they decided they would recoup some extra funds from somewhere. But how to do it?? Aha. Inflate the lease premium. Thing is they hadn’t done their homework.

the palette for the updated interior

If they had initiated the leasehold survey and agreed the price with the freeholder in advance, they could have added their little bit extra and no-one would have known. I’d never have questioned it because it would have looked like they were organised sellers, paperwork in order and all ready to go. But because the agent kept making ‘out of nowhere’ comments, I knew something was up. Every time he tried to coerce me into accepting the sellers terms he would mention that they could get more if they remarketed it.

In the end they got what they wanted, but the market is pretty uncertain right now; maybe it’ll be another year before they actually have it off their hands. And have I found another place to buy?

YEP…

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Planning a Space

I’ve mentioned before how important it is to have your interior space work for you. Not only does it have to house all your belongings, it has to accommodate you, your family and visitors too and if you live in a period property the way it functions now will be very different to how it functioned when it was built.

A house I’m working on at the moment had a raft of alterations done to it about 16 years ago that modernised the property. The clients signed off on the plans and liked the work, but considering my brief, I’m not sure they were ever particularly happy with the function of the space afterwards. So it’s been an interesting task because what those improvements did has actually created problems that in rectifying, I’ve had to decide not to do anything with. I know, that sounds mad, but where steels have been put in, I’m leaving them; where windows have been fitted, I’m leaving them; where ceiling heights have been reduced, I’m leaving them and where soil stacks have been installed, I’m leaving them too.

Yes, I am actually planning on doing things to the house – in fact we’ve finished the first two phases and the final, most invasive scheme was kicked off at the end of January. The clients gave me the go-ahead to radically update the downstairs by putting back in a wall – a glazed wall – early in December. But more on that another time, the space just finished is a master bedroom suite and so far, it seems to be a success.

We started out with two adjacent rooms – the bedroom which was the full width of the house and overlooked the street and the ensuite which had been created by borrowing from and reconfiguring the bedroom behind it. The ensuite was also able to be accessed from the bedroom behind and I think when the family first moved in would have been a practical nursery for their new born son. But times have changed, the rear room is now a study and both parents have said how they wanted to have their room back – privacy was definitely a motivating factor in this redesign.

At first I approached the layout in a very conventional way, left the ensuite where it was and just closed in the door to the rear bedroom/study, but the issues surrounding this were largely of storage and whichever way I looked at it, I couldn’t get enough wardrobe space by leaving it in the bedroom. It just didn’t feel very exciting, the bedroom would still be long and dominated by a wall of wardrobes. Yes, I do put together schemes that are simple and don’t involve a lot of building work – but they usually happen when the space is good to start with – and when the client wants a lot from a space, sometimes there is no choice but to spin it on its head.

That’s when I started to think about this annoying soil stack that had been installed from the upper floor and came down on the party wall through the master bedroom and the front entrance way! It wasn’t at all noticeable but it couldn’t be moved, so why not use it?? Why not spin the layout round and put the ensuite at the far end of the bedroom? That’d mean the old ensuite would become the dressing room and we could double the amount of wardrobe space, the mess would be out of the bedroom and the whole space would have a more intimate and enclosed feel to it.

I re-drew the space to see if it worked and it really did!

Usually there’s a point where all the thinking and the drawing comes to a natural conclusion – and I know I’ve got it right because I get all excited about it – I can see it in my mind. In this case, I wouldn’t have suggested putting in a new soil stack but because it was already there, I was able to take advantage of the location it was in – and in making that decision the whole scheme fit together like puzzle pieces.

creating the ensuite

creating the dressing room

Yes, it has created a smaller bedroom, but it is one that is focused solely on sleep and relaxation. It has a serenity to it; a sense of calmness. There used to be two entrances to the bedroom before, now there is only one. It’s become a destination instead of a corridor and each piece of furniture in there enhances that feeling of peace. The ensuite has that same sense of tranquility too – and this really is a small space. These are all issues to consider when you’re planning a bedroom suite. How much time do you really spend in your bedroom as an adult? In your own home, not that much! So the important function is to promote rest and allow you to start the new day refreshed. It’s worth considering the surrounding rooms if you want to get the space right, but most importantly, take advantage of what you already have. Don’t make something that can’t be moved a negative, instead make the things you can’t change a ‘feature’ or at the very least the pivot for changing the way you think about the room.

using the existing drainage to be concealed in a cupboard

Resolutions – or Projections?

You will have noticed I haven’t been posting recently, I got caught up in the chaos of house buying again – and had another property slip through my fingers. When things go wrong the process of buying property in England – Scotland has a different system – really induces anxiety. As a buyer you get to ask questions and so long as your finance is secure you pretty much get left alone, which can be very difficult if you need advice. Your solicitors are only there to offer legal advice. For anything else they’ll say ‘It’s up to you, I can’t advise you on that.’ And there are some aspects of the property process which are not legal but are important, like knowing how a block of flats pay for maintenance work.

The most recent disaster was a one bedroom flat in a warehouse development near Kings Cross. It was very cool, all exposed brick and bed platforms, but tired and needing a bit of love. It was in a gated courtyard and was on the first floor balcony. It backed onto Regent’s Canal and each property had a key to the canal, just like the private garden enclaves of Knightsbridge or Notting Hill. I really liked its simplicity and how I would be able to use the raw materials to create something unique. I loved how quiet it was and especially how close to such excellent transport links it was – Kings Cross-St Pancras was about half a mile away through a pedestrianised piazza – great for Eurostar, the South coast, the North and central London.

But right from the start the owner wanted as much as he could get out of me. There was another buyer interested and that pushed the price up. I should have walked then because as the conveyancing progressed it became apparent that the documents held at the Land Registry were irregular and that to have ‘clean title’ they would need to be rectified – and the owner was adamant he wasn’t paying for it.

The tussle went on for a number of weeks with the other sides solicitors saying ‘you can do that when you own it.’ But really, why was it my problem? And as my solicitors pointed out, he had owned the place since the development was created in the early 90’s, his legal standing (to prove that the documents were the only copies) was greater than mine would be as the new owner. It all became very heated and then the issue of how maintenance work was paid for raised its head. The development freeholders had had a report done to help them define what maintenance should be done first and then over a 10 year timescale – naturally there were costs attached and I wanted to know how they were intending on paying for them over and above the service charge. Not an unreasonable question but no-one had the answer because it hadn’t been voted on by the owners.

So they agreed to share the minutes of the AGM with me. When they came through I got a bit more than I had expected because not only were the service charge costs going up they had also voted that there would be no AirBnB in the development. And right there, the property was suddenly not fit for my needs. Because I had planned on setting the place up as an AirBnB. That way we could also use the flat ourselves, family and friends from abroad, overnight guests who just needed a single night in town and even me, if I fancied a change of scene. It’d be like a city break without having to go away!

Anyway, it wasn’t to be. As the new girl I wouldn’t have been able to get them to change their minds (the owners association) and I couldn’t take the risk of ignoring it because what kind of protection would that have been for my investment?

So here I am – again – just having put an offer in on another property and what will I do differently this time? Well, that’s the burning question! As I sold my house last year and the funds are just waiting to be put toward a property, I’m ready. As a buyer all I need to do is appoint a solicitor, order a building survey, read some documents and transfer the funds to my solicitors. I think this time that is all I will do. No chasing and getting upset because people aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do.

The thing I have learned though is that in selling a property you should expect to be challenged – if the building has a long and quirky history and a commercial aspect as well or if it is part of a development that was converted from warehouses – any buyer will want to unravel the paper trail to understand how and why things have been done. It isn’t enough for you as a seller to say ‘ that’s just the way it is,’ no-one would give you the legal advice to trust an answer so vague and unfocused. So, when you want to sell a property think about how you would feel if you encountered a mess on the property if you were the buyer. They will feel nervous and need reassuring. If you want to sell, you need to be able to reassure your buyer. And the way you do that is by making sure your paperwork is in order.

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