Today the west London family home belonging to Becky Wilde-Allen and Stuart Allen is a picture of chic serenity. All natural materials and soft colours, light and spacious rooms filled with artworks and plants plus endless storage.
It has not always been so calm, however, as creating this relaxing sanctuary proved chaotic and gruelling.
The process of renovating their tired Victorian home took them five long years, but it did yield a decent profit – almost £1,000,000, in fact.
From stints of back-breaking manual labour to nasty underground surprises, spiralling building costs during the pandemic and the 11th-hour loss of their builders, there were plenty of dramas along the way.
‘The first thing we did was rip up the carpets,’ Becky tells Metro. They found layers of engineered wood and vinyl before uncovering the original floorboards.
These boards had to be taken up, one by one, and the ground beneath them carefully excavated to make room for a layer of underfloor insulation.
Stuart and Becky ended up spending weeks doing this themselves – and not out of choice.
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‘No one else wanted to do it,’ says Stuart. ‘It was a dirty, horrible job and it took us weeks. I don’t think we would ever do this again.’
But now, with the work finally at an end, the couple are thrilled not only with the stylish home they helped create but with the paper profit their labours have earned.
‘The whole thing did end up taking a very long time and a lot went wrong,’ says Stuart, 57, who runs a start-up tracking investment into fusion energy. ‘But we got there and now it all seems very worthwhile.’
When Stuart met Becky, 54, an exam invigilator and school administrator, they were living on different continents. Becky was based in Dubai while Stuart lived in Miami.
After a long-distance relationship, Becky joined Stuart in the US. In 2014 the couple and their sons, Hector, now 17, and Arthur, 14, returned to London. They rented a house in Kew for almost three years until they found a home to buy.
In 2017 they spent £1.2million on a slightly run-down Victorian house in Stamford Brook, west London, with three bedrooms and one bathroom. The ceiling of its tiny hobbit kitchen was so low that Becky could comfortably touch it, while the carpets were ageing and the wallpaper dated.
Despite these shortcomings, the couple felt they could make the house work for their young family.
‘What we saw was the potential to create a space that would grow with our family,’ says Becky.
Fixer-upper homes are an increasingly popular buy, according to recent research by property portal Yopa, as buyers seek ways to cut the costs of climbing the property ladder.
An analysis of 330,000 homes showed that of those in better condition, a third had a buyer. For those that needed a bit of doing up, it was almost a half. Rightmove suggests a typical fixer-upper costs 12% less than a similar home in good condition.
The pair decided to fix up their house in three main phases, beginning with the back-breaking task of sorting out the floors.
On the other hand, taking it on themselves did save them a lot of money – about £9,000 – which came in handy down the line when material costs spiralled during the pandemic.
During this phase the couple also rolled up their sleeves and did some smartening up on the ground floor, adding a wood-burning stove in the living room, removing wallpaper and redecorating.
Then they got the professionals in to rewire the house, replaster its walls and help with some of the decorating.
Smart, period-style radiators were installed and the couple began the task of repairing, sanding and painting the upstairs floorboards. Fitted wardrobes were added to the blue-painted principal bedroom.
‘There was this window on the side of the house that we couldn’t account for inside,’ says Becky.
‘Eventually we worked out that it was covered up by some cupboards in our bedroom that we took down to find a beautiful etched-glass window, which I really love.’
Then the pair hired London-based architects Studio McW to draw up plans for the third and final phase of the project – replacing the kitchen and extending the first floor and converting the loft to give space for an extra bedroom and bathroom.
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This final – and most expensive – phase of the project began in 2021.
Building work often comes with nasty surprises. For Becky and Stuart, these came after the old kitchen and a small conservatory had been knocked down to make space for a kitchen extension.
To overcome the problem of its low ceilings they were going to have to dig down – and this was when they discovered that part of their garden was built out of spoil excavated when a nearby railway line was being built. This meant the ground needed to be strengthened with piling and a concrete slab, slowing them down and adding to building costs.
By this time the pandemic was in full swing and they found themselves hit by the spiralling cost of building materials. ‘The cost of bricks trebled overnight,’ says Stuart. ‘It was a perfect storm.’
In the summer of 2022, their builder went bust. Thankfully, they weren’t owed any money but it did mean they had to take up the reins and finish off the project themselves on an ever-dwindling budget.
Without a working kitchen, their priority was to get that installed, so they hired a new company to lay concrete floors and built matching oak cabinets – including a walk-in pantry and utility room – built-in seating and a new table. For worktops they chose to go luxe, picking a timeless slab of Carrara marble.
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The pair took on many smaller tasks themselves, such as the garden landscaping and painting radiators and floors, to help keep costs down.
They kept and upgraded as many original features as they could, repointing the brick fireplace in the living room, painting the staircase a shade of almost-black and cleaning up the original stained-glass windows.
The work has expanded their living space from 1,585 sq ft to 2,010 sq ft, and cost £450,000. However, the home has since been valued at up to £2million, meaning they have managed to squeeze nearly a six-figure house-price profit out of the project.
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Not that it really matters, because the family, along with pet dog Reggie, are not planning to move any time soon. ‘Our plan,’ says Stuart, ‘is to live here and enjoy it.’
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