Hidden Gem

Anita and Lee have opened up their Victorian villa, which was once a series of grotty bedsits, to create a laid-back space full of light and calm

- Steven Efstathiou

‘When we first came to view the house, my initial thought was, “My god, nobody else knows that this place is here”,’ recalls Anita Grossman. ‘It was so different from other properties in the surrounding area and stood out like a jewel.’

A hidden gem it may have been, but it was also jaw-droppingly awful in another way, as Anita and her husband Lee Redmond had to contemplate just how much of a project it would be to bring the villa back up to scratch. Inside, it had been sliced up into five bedsits and was dark and dank throughout. ‘Still, some of the rooms were habitable,’ explains Anita, ‘so we camped out there and got down to planning the renovation.’

With the need to level out the ground floor a priority (a set of steps led down from the front of the house to the rear), Lee brought his building expertise to bear, stripping the property back to its bones before reconfiguring its internal layout. While the ground floor was levelled, extra height was added to the loft by lowering the floor below, and, subsequently, the floor below that. ‘Eventually, there was so much work going on that you could stand on the ground floor and see right up through the roof,’ says Anita.