Case study · Fitzroy

A Victorian terrace, re-planned around the light

Property: Two-storey Victorian terrace, c. 1885
Scope: Full-home interiors with a new rear kitchen, bathroom and joinery
Duration: 11 months, design to installation
Services: Full-home interiors, Kitchens & bathrooms

Late sun raking across an ornate Victorian cornice

The brief

The house had two rooms at the front that were almost untouched since the 1880s: deep cornices, ceiling roses, marble mantels and baltic pine floors under old carpet. Behind them sat a 1980s lean-to kitchen with low ceilings, little light and a laundry wedged into a corner.

Our clients cook most nights and both work from home two or three days a week. They wanted the back of the house to work hard without the front of the house losing anything. The street frontage sits in a Heritage Overlay, so their architect handled the planning permit for the new rear addition while we designed the interiors throughout.

Design decisions

i.
Restore at the front, stay quiet at the back
Cornices and roses were repaired by a plasterer rather than replaced, the mantels cleaned and kept, and the walls painted in a breathable limewash. In the new rear addition we kept the detailing deliberately plain, so the old work reads clearly as old and the new as new.
ii.
A kitchen that steps out of the way
Oak joinery runs floor to ceiling along one wall and hides the fridge, pantry and a small desk behind flush doors. The island is honed natural marble with a thick edge, and the splashback is cut from the same slab so the veins run through.
iii.
Front room as reading room
The second front room became a study and reading room. Shelving was built into the chimney alcoves, and a deep window reveal became a reading corner with a low armchair and its own lamp.
iv.
Light down the middle of the house
A skylight over the stair now pulls daylight into the hallway, and the upstairs bathroom was lined in honed travertine, which glows warm in low light and hides water marks well.

03 · Before and after