RENOVATED 1930S HOME
Matt and Jason enlisted the help of an interior designer to turn their house near the sea into the perfect entertaining space
Garden room Ambassador Timber Buildings
After years of visiting friends on the South Coast and many conversations about moving, Matt and Jason Mander-Anastasi finally took the plunge, selling their south-west London home and buying a 1930s property near the seaside in Hove. ‘It had been a dream of ours to leave the busy city and move to the coast for quite some time,’ says Matt, ‘I grew up in Malta, where you are never far from the sea, and I missed that.’
‘One of the most important factors for us when we started our search,’ he recalls, ‘was that we had enough space for relatives and friends to stay. We love hosting and have large families, most of whom live far away, and wanted enough rooms for them to stay comfortably without feeling on top of one another. We also needed a good-sized garden for our new puppy, Milo.’ Eventually, the couple found a five-bedroom 1930s detached house, across the road from a beautiful park and only a few minutes drive to the coast. The bedrooms were spacious, and there was a large open-plan kitchen-diner and separate living room – all perfect for entertaining.
‘It was a beautiful big house, and the bare bones were great, but it was stripped back and painted top-to-toe in magnolia, and there were many areas that didn’t work for us,’ says Matt. The couple enlisted the help of an interior designer, Annette Pisani, to redesign the house. ‘We wanted it to be 100 per cent right from the beginning, and as we were new to the area and still living in London, we needed a professional we could trust to oversee the renovation work.’
From the outset, Annette’s brief was ‘statement.’ Both Matt and Jason love colour and wanted to add drama to the very plain rooms. Annette put together visual presentations showing her ideas for each room, introducing panelled walls, rich colour, textures and wallpapers with bold design statements, alongside clever reconfigurations of key areas. She then sourced all the materials, and worked with a trusted builder to bring the designs to life.
One of the first jobs was to relocate the main entrance, which was at the side,
