REAL HOME
‘It was fascinating to see
one wallpaper after another
appear, like peeling back the
history of the house.’
changed the layout to create a four-
storey home with Ellie’s homewares and
lifestyle shop occupying one of the ground
floor rooms. They rewired and re-plumbed
throughout, moved a small first floor
kitchen into a larger ground floor room, re-
fitted the bathroom, reinstated fireplaces
and extended into the loft to create two
more bedrooms and a bathroom.
Before they could start decorating
they had to scrape off 40 years’ worth of
wallpaper. ‘It was fascinating to reveal one
wallpaper layer after another,’ says Ellie.
‘It was like peeling back the history of
the house. There was a lot of lino on the
floors and we pulled all of that up too, in
the hope of finding original floorboards.
Unfortunately, they had long gone, so we
laid Amtico in the kitchen, dining room
and hall and carpeted the rest.’
At first Ellie chose neutral colours88 June 2019 http://www.yourhomemagazine.co.uk
for the walls and was planning to buy
traditional furniture, until she realised it
wasn’t what she wanted. ‘I realised you can
put modern colours and furniture into an
old house, and that you can mix everything
up,’ she says. ‘Once I decided to inject my
own personality into it, everything began
to feel right. We were starting from scratch
with the furniture; our old things were too
small and looked lost in the big rooms, so
we scaled up. We brought a few belongings
we couldn’t bear to part with but most of it
has been bought since we moved in.’
The starting point for the bright-pink
accent colour – which can be found in
almost every room – was a Xoxo light,
swiftly followed by the pink dining chairs.
‘It evolved by accident after that,’ says
Ellie. ‘I loved the fun aspect of the pink
and found myself buying lots of matching
accessories. It’s such a fun colour.Ellie’s favourite parts of the Schüller
kitchen are the pendant extractor fans by
Best and the Kartell stools. The picture
and lamp are both from HomeSenseTurn practical appliances into
design features, like these
modern pendant extractor fans
above the island unit.Good idea!