Katie and Andrew Probert couldn’t resist the chance to buy a Victorian doer-upper on a street they’d always wanted to live on
FEATURE SOPHIE VENING
KITCHEN
Floor-to-ceiling bespoke cabinetry makes the most of the room’s tall ceiling, with a useful ladder giving access to hard-to-reach areas.
HOME TRUTHS
THE PROPERTY Victorian semi-linked terrace house
ROOMS Sitting room, kitchendiner/snug, cloakroom, utility room, five bedrooms, three bathrooms
LOCATION Southwest London
SITTING ROOM
Period features have been sympathetically reintroduced by the main building contractor Adam Truskolaski from TA Prestige Construction.
MEZZANINE
A rope-lined daybed, designed for the couple’s children to hang out in, sits above the snug TV zone. It’s accessed via a secret door off the main staircase.
SNUG
The brick fireplace with a double-sided log burner hides a structural steel column and helps define the snug zone.
DINING AREA
Bench seating suits informal dining. The floors are engineered oak chevron wood flooring, which is robust and ideal for family living.
You could say the timing was serendipitous when Katie and Andrew Probert began their search for a new home. ‘I used to walk down this road on my way to work in my twenties dreaming of owning a home here,’ says Katie, who liked the street’s Victorian architecture and the wide, quiet road.
The couple’s move was linked to needing more space for their growing family – they have three children Poppy, now aged nine, Archie, eight, and Teddy, five. So when a property, which had been split into three flats, came on the market on Katie’s desired street at exactly the same time that they began their search, she knew it was fate. ‘We had previously renovated two properties together so we weren’t deterred by the size of the project,’ says Katie, which involved building a loft extension and also transforming the rear of the property to create the perfect family home.
The couple employed MAP Architecture to redesign the house. The aim was to add a rear ground floor extension to accommodate an open-plan kitchen-diner and snug, include plenty of storage, overhaul
