Our Open House series offers you a chance to meet the sellers of homes we represent to hear what’s made their homes enriching, special places to live. Here, we head to Brockley in south-east London to meet Tamara Giltsoff, who tells us the story of how, along with her husband, Robert Conway, the couple went about transforming their renovated Victorian house into a modern living space that comes with a contemporary extension and landscaped garden. Check out the listing here.
Tamara: “In all honesty, we were definitely not looking for a Victorian house. We really like 1960s townhouses, and we very nearly bought one in Dulwich Woods. This is a good example of Victorian architecture, though. Its very spacious with a really wide hallway. For me, theres something about an entrance to a home thats really important – walking into a squashed, cramped hallway just sets the wrong tone, I think.
“The feeling of space here is what I’ve come to value most about this house. Its a big house and theres only two of us in it, and we feel very lucky for that. And I value the light and the space around the house. Even though were in London the sky behind us is very big because at the end of the long garden is a railway track (and not a particularly busy one). Because its so full of trees, you look out and you could be in the countryside. All of that really came before we did the work.
“I met my husband after returning from living and working in New York. He was living in Holloway in north London at the time and I wasn’t too far away. When we got married we bought this house together.
“I think we feel in love with Brockley as much as the house but we didnt know anything about the area before we looked here. We dont have kids, so we wanted to move somewhere that wasnt too yummy mummy. There are lots of young families here now, actually, but it still has this really nice relaxed, arty, cool-but-not-too-much vibe going on.
“Theres a great community, which under lockdown has just come out even more. Ive set up a WhatsApp group on the street and now there are 45 people in it, and were all swapping and exchanging, using each other’s printers and what else.
“We moved in as soon as we bought it in 2012, lived here for six months and then moved out for six months while we did the work. One of the main parts of the brief was that the house really needed upgrading. And that was everything – electrics, plumbing, insulating, new windows – so we had to gut the whole house and start again.
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发表于 2020-8-4 01:39:55
