As a first-time buyer with no renovation experience, Ed Colston, 32, could have been forgiven for choosing a shiny new-build flat that he could move straight into. However, Colston knew it was in his best interests to play the long game. After moving to London after graduating, he flat-hopped his way around the city for the best part of a decade while saving for a place of his own.
“I wanted somewhere in a less busy part of London, with outdoor space that I could put my stamp on,” says Colston. He settled on Brockley, a relatively quiet, leafy suburb in south-east London, but which “has enough going on”.
While others might have turned their noses up at a 1960s doer-upper with a bright-orange feature wall, Kermit-green shagpile sofa and higgledy-piggledy layout, Colston smelt an opportunity. “I liked the fact it was an end-of-terrace, so it was more spacious than others on the street, and had a separate hallway. Plus it was in a conservation area with a south-facing garden that wasn’t overlooked.” Colston felt the £565,000 asking price was reasonable given the competitive housing market, and it was cheaper than similar properties he’d looked at in the area.
Colston consulted interior designer Grace King, founder of Studio Rey, as soon as he moved in in the summer of 2022. King recommended that, rather than rushing in with a sledge hammer, Colston live in the house for almost a year to get a feel for how he might best utilise the space.
“It was important to me to have friends over, but there was a poky galley kitchen and the stairs cut through the middle of the sitting room. I needed to create more livable space for entertaining,” says Ed. King advised embracing the darkness of the front room by turning it into a cosy snug, but adding a 3m x 3m kitchen-diner extension to the rear to maximise space and light, with a utility and cloakroom tucked under the newly positioned staircase. Moving the stairs also allowed for a more square-shaped master bedroom (it had been L-shaped because of the stairwell), and the bathroom door was shifted to turn the second bedroom from a box room into a double guest bedroom, with the hot water tank relocated to the loft to make way for wardrobes.
Rather than hiring a conventional architect to draw up plans, Colston opted for the architectural design platform Resi:
“While other architects were quoting on a percentage basis, I liked the transparency of a fixed upfront fee.” He found using a virtual dashboard for the project helped him juggle the work and his hectic job, “avoiding constant calls and having to be at home”.
The project took five months and came in on budget, which Colston puts down to King’s expertise: “While hiring an interior designer is an expense, she saved me time and money in the long run – Grace came up with cost-saving design hacks, could source products a lot quicker than I could and knew how and where to find good-quality pieces at a decent price, often utilising her trade discounts.”
In the kitchen the base units and banquette seating are Ikea carcasses cleverly hidden behind Husk cabinet fronts for a more premium look. “We went higher end on those items where we needed smaller quantities, like the tiles from Mandarin Stone in the kitchen and bathroom, and the oak herringbone floor in the snug,” says Colston. He initially wanted a poured concrete floor in the kitchen but learned that it was “terrifyingly expensive”, so King suggested a large-format concrete-effect tile laid with thin grout lines to achieve a similar look. Colston bought most of his appliances on eBay or ex-display to save money.
The kitchen cost about £12,000, which included a bespoke pantry unit, also by Husk. To maximise space in the snug, King tasked the builders with creating a media wall from MDF: it has ample storage but is painted in the same deep blue as the walls, so it looks unobtrusive.
“It now feels like one harmonious space, where before it felt like lots of bits stuck together with no cohesion,” Colston says. “I now spend most of my time downstairs, especially in the kitchen-diner.
“It’s so nice to be able to finally have friends over in a space worthy of entertaining; I often have up to 10 people sitting around the dining table with the bi-folds open on to the garden. It’s not just a house – it has become a way of life for me.”