LANCASHIRE HOUSE
Emma and Simon Jamieson have proved you can repurpose rooms to make a period home more family-friendly, while reinstating character features
FEATURE KAREN WILSON
With three young sons, Emma and Simon Jamieson wanted their Victorian home in Lancashire to flow better for family life while ensuring the period character shone through. ‘We’d just finished renovating our 1930s semi when Si spotted this house on RightMove on a road we’d always loved,’ Emma says. ‘Everything about it – the symmetry, the long driveway, the period feel, the big garden – was tick, tick, tick. Our parents tried to deter us, calling it a money pit, but we’d fallen for it.’
Emma and Simon tried to convince themselves the work was mostly cosmetic but soon had to admit there was a lot more to do than removing the red carpet from the hall, stairs, landing and bathroom. In January 2018, they moved in and made a rough plan of works to be tackled, which included new central heating, windows, roof repairs and electrics. ‘We had a full renovation on our hands and, in the end, every room was taken back to brick, starting on the first floor,’ Emma explains.
A fifth bedroom and family bathroom became an en suite and dressing room for the couple’s bedroom, and they turned an en suite off the younger boys’ bedroom into the main family bathroom by moving the door. At the end of 2019 the old kitchen was turned into a utility room and the large room next door – dubbed ‘the ballroom’ –became a kitchen-diner. ‘The previous owners had it as aTV room so it was wasted space. You could only access it from the front sitting room via double doors so we blocked them off and opened it up to the hall with pocket doors to make the ground floor flow better,’ Emma says. ‘There were also two archways from the hall into the sitting room with red velvet curtains and gold tassels. It was like being at the London Palladium! It made sense to block one up and turn the other into a proper doorway.’
Unfortunately most of the period features had been taken away, apart from the lovely cornicing, but Emma and Simon restored character by re-using bricks and slates, fitting new timber sash windows, adding panelling and sourcing traditional fireplaces. Some original skirting boards were restored and new sections matched in. They couldn’t find reclaimed doors to fit, so opted for new solid oak doors instead
