We bought this house six years ago, knowing that it had plenty of potential, but also that we were going to spend several years renovating it,’ says Tessa. ‘The downstairs floorplan was a real issue and it just didn’t suit us as a family with young children. The living room just needed a bit of renovating, but the rest of it was a mess.
There was a tiny, dated kitchen, a lean-to and a strange dining room that didn’t serve any real purpose. The obvious thing to do was rip it all out, take the back off the house and extend into the large garden.