TOTAL transformation

Entrusting the keys to his new Bath house to builder brother James and designer wife Beth, Paul Kettlety disappeared abroad for nine months...

- Victoria Jenkins

It was a cold day in the winter of 2013 when Paul Kettlety came to view his 1980s cube house in Bath.

“The house was even colder,” he says. “And it was also very dark with old-fashioned tiling everywhere and an altogether clinical feel. But it was immaculately kept and I loved it.”

The house was actually two cubes, one higher up the hill than the other, linked by a corridor which bisected them. They were faced in reconstituted sandstone – which added to the chill factor – and consisted of three levels with five bedrooms. A double garage took up the ground floor and the whole area was some 2,000 sq ft.

“It was in a great location with a great outlook and had been very well looked after,” he says. “But nothing had been done to it since it had been built.”

It emerged that the elderly owner was down-sizing and wanted to leave immediately – “taking only his personal bits,” says Paul. “So, I was able to move in straight away – which suited me quite well – and start using his furniture, even down to the plates, cups and saucers. I lived there on and off for a year – I travel a great deal with my job – while deciding what I needed to do to it.”