HOMES

25bh | victorian house132 | 25bh october 2017l e s s o nlearnt‘We wanted everyspace to have a bitof light-heartedhumour – even thesmallest ones, andwe worked with theesoteric shapes ofthe rooms, ratherthan trying todisguise them’###### discovering a new angle sums upcheryl and andy’s approach totheir london home, where theyhave looked beneath its formalVictorian style to reveal something sharperand altogether more intriguing. theirmasterstroke was slicing decisively throughthe house’s traditional core, insertingsections of glass and crisp lines, so that theonce buttoned-up 19th-century space nowflows with renewed energy.cheryl and andy have succeeded insolving an architectural puzzle that has lainat the heart of this Fulham home since itwas built. it’s not obvious at first, but thefloor plan of this handsome double-frontedhouse is more trapezium than rectangle –probably the result of bickering Victorianbuilders when the land was divided up. itmeans that the house’s two exterior sidewalls gently angle inwards, meeting in apoint at the end of a wedge-shaped garden.Given his work as a property developer,andy was unfazed by this. ‘i’m used tofinding solutions to unusual problems,’ hesays. cheryl was less blasé. ‘the irregularangles were a bit scary and complicated, andhad put off several other buyers,’ she says.but neither andy nor cheryl are in thehabit of shirking a challenge. and andy’sphilosophy – to work with the problemrather than trying to disguise it – has paidoff. ‘in the end, the wall angles were thedriving force behind the house’s redesignand architecture,’ he says. the tapered,triangular floor spaces seemed to be crying