BEFORE & AFTER HOME
WHEN KATE ANDREWS AND JAKE WILLMORE LEFT LONDON FOR NORTH YORKSHIRE, THEY TOOK ON THE TASK OF RENOVATING A GEORGIAN PROPERTY INTO A MODERN FAMILY HOME. HERE’S THE STORY SO FAR…
FLOORPLAN RICHARD HOOKWAY
HOME NOTES
WHO LIVES HERE?
Kate Andrews, a creative manager at END. clothing, and Jake Willmore, brand director for Lavenham and George Cox, live here with their children Rafferty, nine, and Ferdie, six.
THE PROPERTY
A renovated Georgian semidetached house in North Yorkshire. See more at @richmond_reno_project.
Snug
‘We haven’t changed much in this room yet apart from adding the comfortable pink velvet sofa, which we already owned.’
Kate and Jake lived in London for 15 years before moving to North Yorkshire with their growing family. ‘It made sense to move back towards where I grew up. I wanted my children to be able to play outside and to be closer to my family,’ Kate says. ‘This house is much bigger than we needed but the location is perfect - the train station is just a ten-minute drive for Jake to commute to London once a week.’
A HUGE CHANGE
While the buying process began smoothly, the couple wisely chose to have a full structural survey carried out. ‘It came back at 42 pages long,’ says Kate. ‘I negotiated £75,000 off the price. There are still big jobs to be done but at least we knew that from the start. As it’s a Grade II-listed property, we need to apply for permission to change anything – even to drill a hole to rewire a light outside the front door.’
MOVING IN
‘The first thing we did was paint the yellow walls white, just to make things more bearable,’ says Kate. After six months the major building work began, with Kate’s brother-in-law (browsondesignandbuild.com) project managing. ‘There were so many tradespeople involved, all needing to be there in a certain order. We wouldn’t have known where to start without his help.’
ONE STEP FORWARD…
‘The biggest shock along the way was how messy rewiring was – the walls were totally ripped apart,’
Kate recalls. ‘We moved in with my sister, who lives locally, and popped back to keep an eye on progress. Something else I underestimated was the cost of lighting. We went a bit mad with the lighting plan, then I found out how expensive wall lights are, plus paying the electrician to fit them really added up.’
TIME TO DECORATE
The couple wanted to restore the Georgian property to its former glory so used period colours from Edward Bulmer and Farrow & Ball. ‘We’ve kept the t
