Innholdsfortegnelse for Homes & Antiques - Vintage Homes i Essential Kitchen Bathroom Bedroom

Here at Homes & Antiques, we love the real homes that we feature so much that we’ve put 25 of our favourites into this special edition, which is split into five chapters covering everything from vintage crafty to 20th-century style. Each chapter has a handy get-the-look section at the end too. When we’re deciding which homes to feature in the magazine every month, we always question what a Homes & Antiques house is and the short answer is: it’s one where the owners show real creativity, initiative and flair. Our owners come from all walks of life and they’re aged from their mid-twenties to their seventies and beyond. Their houses can be modern or traditional, in the city or country, but they have two uniting factors: firstly, the homes are…

It’s not unusual to find the odd surprise when you move into your new home but, when artist Fay Sweet took the keys for her Suffolk bungalow, she was taken aback to discover a mysterious secret house in a barn in the grounds. ‘I’d been to look around on a few occasions but the barn had been locked every time. It was only when I moved in and could get into the barn that I realised it contained a whole mini-house. It was even hooked up to Sky TV!’ Strange buildings aside (and the rumours locally about its use were colourful), the bungalow presented itself as the ultimate project, sitting in the countryside near Halesworth with far-reaching views over pasture and woods. A veteran of three previous renovations, Fay felt…

For stockist information see page 130…

Karen Price makes it all look very easy. Her country home – in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it village of Chewton Mendip near Wells – looks like it would be more at home in Provence: all flagstone floors, iridescent lime-rendered walls and elegant antique furnishings. Appearances can be deceptive though and the polished finish belies a year of hard grafting. When Karen bought the 17th-century house seven years ago she was after a renovation project and this place couldn’t have been more of one. What is now the sitting room was the village post office; the dining room was originally a bakery; and the kitchen, literally, a pig sty. ‘During the viewing there was a whole pig being roasted in what was the bakery – which was filled with huge ovens – and…

For stockist information see page 130…

‘This is pretty much the longest I’ve lived anywhere since leaving home and it’s interesting that I seem to be staying’ You might expect an architect who has a passion for simplicity and an eye for detail to settle in a minimal glass box of their own design. Not so for Cat Martin, although that was the original plan. ‘I wanted to move to Bristol and I’d just been gazumped on a fabulous top floor flat. This house was under offer when the agents called me and said that it had fallen though. I saw it and thought, “I could live here.”’ Over six years later and Cat is still in situ, an extraordinary feat in itself for someone who has had more than 15 different addresses in the last…

Pippa Connelly seems to have the work-life balance just right. Living in an idyllic corner of Hampshire, the cottage she shares with her husband James and their two children, Bell and Will, is a relaxed family home and the base for Pippa’s soft furnishings business. The couple migrated from London in stages, moving first to Surrey before settling near the old village of Liphook. The cottage they bought was built as a bungalow in the 1930s but has since been extended and replanned. ‘Its quirkiness appealed to me,’ says Pippa. ‘I could imagine us living there.’ The advice Pippa lives by and encourages her clients to follow is, ‘Don’t rush. Take time to get to know your home. You need to live in a house and see it through the…

The 27th of September 2008 was a big day for Sarah Woods. Not only did she obtain the house of her dreams but her husband, Nich, also proposed. ‘Nich and I had been discussing the house for months and would drive past it just to have a peek,’ she says. ‘So when, one evening, Nich suggested we look at it again, I didn’t bat an eyelid. On arrival, he produced the keys and declared it ours. He’d also been inside the house and prepped it with a bottle of champagne, flowers and a sapphire ring for a traditional down-on-one-knee proposal.’ Sarah and Nich had been renting a modern apartment in Harrogate but had their hearts set on living in the countryside. And tucked away in a tiny North Yorkshire village,…

When Karen and Anthony Cull decided to return to Gloucestershire after living in Mallorca for eight years, it wasn’t just a new house they had to find. They had to gather new furniture, new artwork and new ornaments – the whole kit and caboodle. Because, no sooner had they put their spacious converted flour mill on the market, they found a buyer who not only wanted the house but its entire contents as well. In the UK, Karen and Anthony were looking for something completely different to their Spanish home and they found it – in the form of a two-bedroom 16th-century thatched cottage in the Cotswold village of Gretton.‘We were leaving something really special behind so we wanted something special to move into,’ says Karen.‘We felt it was right…

‘I missed one out,’ remembers Sheila New, when asked to count the number of homes that she’s owned. ‘There was also the thatched cottage that I bought on a whim when I went out to buy some spoons!’ Sheila’s current home – an early 20th-century house in the coastal town of Sidmouth in Devon – is her 19th address. And although Sheila completely gutted the place – ripping out laminate flooring, repainting colourful walls, removing marble fireplaces and replacing the built-in kitchen – she describes the year-long process as a ‘doddle’. ‘I once moved into a large Georgian house that was missing a floor. You could see right through to the cellar,’ she says. ‘And there was the place where my former husband and I had to remove the lower…

Tucked away down a steep rough track, one mile from the South Molton village of Romansleigh, it’s fair to say that you wouldn’t stumble across Rosie and David Ames’s home by chance. And, for a house set so deeply in the countryside, a 1970s building is perhaps the opposite of what you might expect to find. ‘We weren’t looking for somewhere modern at all,’ admits Rosie, ‘When we started house-hunting we dreamt of a Devon longhouse with an Aga but this place ticked all the boxes: there aren’t any near neighbours and the setting is beautiful, within 10 acres of land. We thought it would be an interesting adventure!’ ‘Being a 1970s house, it wasn’t the best quality of build originally and it had become very run down,’ says Rosie,…

‘For me, memories make a home – be they objects passed down from family members, gifts from loved ones or simply items that remind you of a holiday’ Jacqui Brooks is toying with the idea of extending into her attic. Not because she wants a guest room or to enlarge the size of the bedrooms but because the family business has gradually begun to take over the 1920s, Leicester home that she shares with her two daughters Hollie and Amelia. The trio launched MiaFleur, an online homeware boutique with a vintage focus, just over a year ago and, although the set-up sounds too good to be true, it’s something that Jacqui has dreamt about for as long as she can remember. ‘My paternal grandmother was a fine seamstress who made…

Eleven miles from the town of Launceston, with uninterrupted views of Bodmin Moor, sits Tregulland. A restored 15th-century cottage, a neighbouring 18th-century barn conversion and a fresh water swimming pool housed in a new timber-clad building, it’s hardly the sort of place you’d expect to stumble across in rural Cornwall – especially when you see the interiors. On-trend slate grey walls and dark wood floors are teamed with exposed stone and ceiling beams; flea market finds provide talking points and fabrics are plush and expensive-looking. These striking good looks can be accredited to Rye-based interior designer Marcus Crane, who was commissioned by owners Ken Aylmer and his wife Illona to work on the project. His brief was to create something that was smart, interesting and comfortable.‘We bought the place as…

For someone who, on seeing the new home her partner had ear-marked for their family, started crying and then reasoned ‘nevermind – we can move again,’ Jenny Warner has done well. In fact, she and her partner Dom are still enjoying the makeover process over a decade later. ‘I change my mind a lot and it’s all just too easy to tweak rooms with fresh paint,’ says Jenny. The couple started their coastal house hunt in Whitstable and then worked their way around the south coast until they eventually reached Southsea, where Dom found this property, a four-minute walk from the seafront. The family were in within three months and Jenny and Dom spent endless evenings after tearing off wallpaper and ripping up carpets.‘The house hadn’t been decorated in about…

Helen and her husband Alasdair bought this Cornish cottage after falling in love with Mousehole while on holiday. ‘As soon as we drove into the village on New Year’s Day 2000 we were hooked,’ explains Helen. ‘This place has some sort of magic that entraps you. Alasdair had always wanted to live by the sea and we were outgrowing our maisonette in Leamington Spa, so it made sense to relocate.’ As Alasdair is a self-employed builder they had the freedom to act on what most people merely daydream about and, less than a year later, the couple and their son Josh were heading west. Helen initially went to see Gone Fishing Cottage on behalf of her parents, who were also thinking of relocating. An end-of-terrace granite house with a slate…

Tucked away in the south Buckinghamshire countryside with a large pond between the garden and meadow, Caroline Johnston’s home couldn’t be in a more idyllic setting. However, although the storybook location was obviously a draw, it was the unusual shape and history of the 17th-century house that won her and husband Nigel over. ‘The children, Jonathan, Cameron and Frazer, love the individuality of the place, too – and when they were younger, the pond was often the site of raft building and plank walking,’ says Caroline. Caroline and Nigel are both keen antiques lovers and saw the house as the perfect backdrop for their collections, although when they first moved in this wasn’t quite the case.‘The house had been renovated and modernised a decade before we bought it but the…

‘I absolutely love French furniture and antiques. Many holidays have been spent in Paris, rootling around brocantes and discovering out-of-the-way markets’ ‘When friends first visited our new home they joked that they couldn’t tell we’d moved,’ recalls interior designer Abbie de Bunsen. ‘My husband James and I love Victorian architecture, with its generous ceiling height and cornicing. But Victorian terraces in London do tend to have identical layouts so, when we moved out of a terrace in Clapham to one in Wandsworth, we knew we would have to work on the decor to create a different feel.’ Despite the fact that Abbie’s job entails designing different looks in her clients’ homes, she cites deciding on how to decorate her own house as one of the biggest challenges she faced when…

Maggie Beasley, husband Keith and Maggie’s daughter, Klara, are quite the home makeover team. Although Maggie recently retired, she previously worked in kitchen design; Keith is a retired carpenter and had installed kitchens alongside Maggie for 26 years, and Klara has been working as an interior designer for the last 30 years. Friends thought Maggie and Keith were mad for retiring to a rundown 19th-century house in the Cotswolds that was, to put it mildly, a bit of a project. But with their experience in home improvement, and the interior design support they received from Klara, Hazel Cottage was always going to be in safe hands. Having taken the decision to downsize, the couple took a year to find the cottage, built in 1830. What appealed was its individuality –…

‘I’ve always loved mixing old and new but, rather than going in the shabby chic direction, I prefer a more streamlined look’ Sleek organic shapes, richly hued timbers, solid construction – who doesn’t love a bit of mid-century Danish? For Danish-born Helle Moyna, it’s a style that’s always had a firm place in her home. ‘I love the simple form and brilliant craftsmanship of pieces from that era and have bought a lot of mid-century pieces over the years, mostly from Danish auctions,’ she says. Prices for mid-century furniture have boomed with its popularity but when Helle bought many of her pieces, it was still affordable. Amazingly, the rosewood sideboard cost just £250. ‘People have offered to buy it from me for £4,000,’ she says. ‘I always tell them that…

For stockist information see page 130…

For stockist information see page 130…