MID-CENTURY SEMI
Sophia and Neil’s carefree approach to redesigning their Stockport home has resulted in rooms packed with colour and vibrant pattern
IDEA TO STEAL Make a feature out of structural beams by painting them
When Neil and I took on this three-bed semi, it hadn’t been touched since the 1990s,’ says Sophia. ‘It had a large living-dining room, plus a kitchen complete with a serving hatch, patterned carpets throughout and inch-thick wallpaper on every wall, the remnants of previous owners who ran a wallpaper shop!
Upstairs, the bedrooms were dated and the bathroom was separate from the toilet. It needed a lot of modernisation but we could see the potential.
Making plans
We moved in in December 2017 but didn’t do anything for two years so we could save up to do what we wanted. We did decorate our bedroom so Neil and I would have a nice place to escape the chaos though! Our big idea was to create an open-plan kitchen-diner by stealing some of the space from the long living room so that would become a smaller, cosy space, while the kitchen wall would be knocked through to be more open with bifold doors and new skylights.
The people who lived here before had already extended across the width of the house, which formed part of the existing kitchen and an area nicknamed the ‘cold room’ by the kids, which we never used. To help us redesign downstairs, we decided to hire an architectural designer and structural engineer. We were keen to keep within the footprint and just reconfigure the rooms by knocking through. We also put a planning application in for a double-storey side extension which was approved, but we haven’t done that yet – that’s phase two!
Planning the kitchen
Building work began in January 2020, which, after such a long wait, was very exciting. I’d spent two years washing d
