Leanne Kilroy and Eric Fulwiler knew that they had unearthed a gem when they came across this former lodging house – despite the extensive work needed to give it new life
FEATURE EMMA J PAGE PHOTOGRAPHY RACHAEL SMITH
‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’, and in the case of this family home in London, it is a saying that could not be more apt. Its purchase nearly fell through several times for Leanne Kilroy and Eric Fulwiler, so, when the Victorian terrace finally became theirs, the prospect of renovating while living on-site, or contending with its lodging-house layout alongside three small children did not faze them. “In fact, I had a big appetite for the work,” says Leanne. “We wanted to make our own imprint on this home. For us, the second-floor bedsit kitchen, which may have deterred many, was a bonus. We knew it would come in handy when we renovated the ground floor.”
The couple, who relocated from Massachusetts via New York City to London in 2016, have a relaxed international sensibility that comes from various stints abroad, including Italy, Australia and Canada. They chose to settle in the capital with their children – Stella 12, Vesper, seven and Domino, five – as they were attracted by its cosmopolitan nature and, as Leanne puts it, “because we feel at home among diversity, in a city that we’re familiar with.”
Though both grew up in period homes in the USA, Leanne is the first to admit that a British terraced house produces its own unique challenges. “Neither of us is unfamiliar with the Victorian vernacular, but of course, terraced city homes tend to be narrower, lack rear access from the street and can suffer from a lack of light. So we both knew that spatial planning would be key and that we’d need to think carefully about storage.”
Favouring a circular layout with no dead-ends, Leanne reworked the ground floor, incorporating a loo, coat storage and pantry, without having to disturb the property’s architectural bones too much. She also knocked through the front and middle sitting rooms, removed the existing kitchen extension and pushed further outwards and to the side, creating an elegant timber-and-wood orangery-style addition, whose steeply pitched roofs, when s
