THIS UNFASHIONABLE 1950S HOUSE WAS TRANSFORMED INTO A SCANDI-INSPIRED SANCTUARY
Amy Kendrick and her husband, Steve Waterman, are a couple with the renovation “itch”. Over the past 15 years they have overhauled four homes to a high standard, starting with a flat in Camberwell and graduating to a detached property in Dulwich, both in south-east London. “I wouldn’t say we’ve flipped properties; we’ve lived in them for several years,” says Kendrick, who grew up close by and has always lived within five miles of the capital.
Waterman is from New Zealand, where he trained and is registered as an architect. Together the pair founded their own property development and interior design company, Studio WM, and they have worked on other properties in addition to their own. “Steve has all the formal training and background, and it works well in that I do the interiors and the specification. Ultimately, he makes it all look beautiful,” says Kendrick with a laugh.
The couple had not long completed an extensive overhaul of a four-storey Victorian townhouse in nearby West Dulwich, which they shared with their two young children, when their attention was piqued by a different proposition. On the corner plot of a cul-de-sac less than a mile away a tired-looking house had come back on the market. The mid-century property was designed in the 1950s by a local practice, Austin Vernon and Partners, which was charged with much of the redevelopment of the Dulwich Estate following the Second World War. “We were looking out for our next project, and the main appeal was the wraparound garden – not so much the look of the house, because it wasn’t all that beautiful when we saw it,” recalls Kendrick.
The scale of the house and its garden offered decent value for the area. As seasoned renovators, they wasted no time: the family moved into a rental while they gutted the house and were able to call it home just 18 months later. Here, Kendrick explains how they took it from 1950s time warp to a four-bedroom, Scandi-inspired sanctuary.
Getting the bones right
As a probate sale, the house had sat empty for two years. “The first sale fell through because the buyers thought it was too much of a project. It wasn’t really liveable, and everything needed updating,” explains Kendrick. The couple’s plan was to update the utilities and add lots of glazing to maximise the house’s orientation. They were limited by the Dulwich Estate’s strict guidelines: considering all the houses on the street as part of a group, all the roof tiles needed to be the same. The front facade couldn’t be dramatically altered either, “but at the back they weren’t too worried”, says Kendrick.
The first thing to go was an unsightly “wedge” side extension that had been poorly executed decades earlier. “It was quite strange, and we thought we could do something that looked better,” says Kendrick. The result is a double-storey addition that is seamlessly connected to the rest of the house, anchored downstairs by a striking corner of floor-to-ceiling windows that flood the space with natural light.
Designing for modern life
Low ceilings are a mainstay in 1950s houses, so the couple bravely opted to dig down to improve the volume of the downstairs rooms. Coupled with a newly extended open floor plan, the house feels much more generous than before. For Waterman, the style is reminiscent of the houses where he grew up in New Zealand, which are often detached, single-level with a garage and a decent patch of land.
“Steve thinks it would be very hard to go back to smaller living spaces now,” says Kendrick. The seamless connection to the garden also can’t be matched in a Victorian property. “We enjoy a really nice flow to the outside. It’s a great house for parties – we just hosted my parents’ 50th-anniversary celebration,” adds Kendrick.
Adding Scandinavian style
Teak panelling and coloured sanitaryware might be enjoying a resurgence in some design circles, but Kendrick says the existing bathrooms were unusable, and she leans towards a “modern, minimal and Scandinavian style”. That translated to light oak floorboards, marble-wrapped showers and unfussy, gauzy curtains. Working with what effectively looked like a new build inside – and devoid of handsome features like cornicing and picture rails – Kendrick specified limewash paint by the specialist Bauwerk for many of the walls to lend depth. “Otherwise it was just going to look like a blank box,” she says. Steel doors separating the living rooms from the kitchen also inject industrial-inspired character.
Creating a dream kitchen
Renovating can be stressful, but the payoff for a couple like Kendrick and Waterman is the creative freedom that comes with it. Without clients to appease, Kendrick was able to look at importing a kitchen from the Swedish brand Nordiska Kok, which she had long admired. “There aren’t many places in the UK that do kitchens with genuinely Scandinavian wooden fronts,” she explains, describing the cost as “reasonable” considering the high level of craftsmanship and quality. “I saw lots of really lovely projects on their website, and was convinced just by that. We did design meetings over Zoom,” she says. The kitchen is now one of her favourite spaces, and a separate pantry took some of the heavy lifting off the cabinet configuration.
The splurges versus the saves
The family were working to a budget, although one they don’t want to disclose. “The non-negotiables for Steve, being an architect, was being able to get exactly the glazing he wanted,” says Kendrick of what ate up a large chunk of their budget. For her, it was the touches of Calacatta Monet marble, which add movement and personality to the kitchen’s worktop and backsplash. “It brings interest and has lots of different colours in the veining, so it’s nice to look at and is a natural material,” she explains. Offsetting the cost of these extravagances is the flooring downstairs, which despite looking like polished concrete (which is costly) is in fact screed. “It’s similar to micro cement, but it’s poured rather than trowelled,” explains Kendrick.
A house fit for the future
Kendrick warns that mid-century properties often require significant insulation work: “The walls and roof didn’t have any whatsoever, so to bring everything up to standard can take quite a lot.” To make the house energy efficient, the couple put in an air-source heat pump and underfloor heating throughout. When they moved in at Christmas, the novelty was a first winter in which the house remained at a consistent temperature. Less techy but lovely to look at is a green roof to the front of the house, which the Dulwich Estate dictated as part of the renovation. Another clever touch is that the ground floor is all on one level, making it easy for older people to access the guest room (which also doubles up as a study). Kendrick and Waterman don’t need to worry about mobility issues just yet, but they might have already moved on when their time comes. “We wouldn’t rule out another project in the future,” chuckles Kendrick.
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