After years of living in a Victorian house in south-east London, it was time for us to move out of the capital and so we started looking around north Essex,’ says Erica. ‘We arranged a day to view several houses and I went to see this one under duress; it was a new build and I had never lived in a new home before. I remember driving up to it and thinking “Oh, I actually really like it!” After living in London for 20 years, I couldn’t believe the space.
The house wasn’t decorated to my taste though – it was all white and beige, and the kitchen was very dark with French doors leading into a conservatory, which was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. We knew we’d want to turn that into a practical and functional part of the kitchen. That aside, we fell in love with the space and
