Fabulous Facelift

This Victorian home in Hastings, England, had fallen into dilapidation when Emily and Gareth Rees gave it a new lease of life and turned it into a quirky family home

- Maxine Brady

When Emily and Gareth Rees moved their family to Hastings, England, they not only swapped their metropolitan London life for the serenity of this seaside town, but they also traded in their finished home for a huge renovation project that tested their design and DIY skills. ‘We’d only visited Hastings twice before we moved here,’ says Emily. ‘But we loved the artistic atmosphere and the vibrant creative scene. We knew it would be a good move for our family.’ The couple spotted the large Victorian house for sale but it had been converted in the 1970s into two separate flats by two older ladies. ‘Each flat was a time capsule of ‘70s paint colours, threadbare carpets and it was damp and smelled of cigarettes,’ says Emily. ‘It was awful, but it was so much bigger than our Hackney home, and the potential was huge,’ she says. ‘And I’d been looking for a project to sink my teeth into.’ So the couple decided to invest the money they made on the sale of their London home to renovate the property from top-to-bottom. However, they definitely underestimated the undertaking.