After a laborious, hands-on restoration of their Edwardian London home, Sheila and Giles Udy turned to interior designer Susanna Thomas to rekindle its decorative charms
FEATURE SERENA FOKSCHANER PHOTOGRAPHS RACHAEL SMITH
The early months of marriage are, traditionally, wrapped in an atmosphere of carefree rose-scented romance. Giles and Sheila Udy took a different approach. ‘One of the first things I did after we got married was to enrol on a soft furnishings course,’ recalls Sheila, who was then working in insurance. Giles, a historian, was dispatched ‘not unwillingly’, he says, to learn woodworking.
The pragmatism has paid off. To say that the pair have done work on their Edwardian house, in a tree-shaded corner of south-west London, would be an understatement. Over the past two decades they’ve pooled their practical skills – cabinetry, floor-planning and curtain making – to transform the property, which had been turned into a series of bedsits in the 1970s.
‘We gutted the house – Giles worked on it hands-on full-time, bringing in a plasterer and others to help with the work,’ says Sheila, who has recently retired from a second career as a florist. But resourcefulness can only take you so far. When the last dust sheet was whisked away and the final floor plank banged into place, something was not quite right. The house lacked esprit. The paint colours didn’t sing, heirloom furniture lurked in dark corners. A creative eye was needed: ‘Someone to bring it to life,’ says Sheila.
Enter Susanna Thomas: an interior designer with a literary bent, who specialises in schemes that ‘reflect their owners’. Susanna is a longstanding friend, and knows the house well. She has sat at the kitchen table, ‘the Aga whirring with pots and pans’, listening to renovation stories: such as the time they uncovered the Edwardian axe originally used to remove the lath under the horsehair plaster. Or the way that the new railings outside the front of the house are based on the originals, removed during the Second World War when iron was scarce. ‘The house had all the ingredients, but they hadn’t quite cooked them properly,’ says Susanna. She was given carte blanche, says Sheila, ‘to do what she liked. We bought new wallpapers, lampshades and furniture but Susanna also made what we already had look beautiful.’
The search for new furnishings began in Sheila’s fabric room, the shelves crammed with sale steals amassed over the years. ‘I spent hours among the rolls and remnants that Sheila had bough
