Extending and Modernising a 1930s Home

"People look at our house and think we must have spent a fortune in designer shops," says Stuart Cooper. "The truth is that almost everything has been done on a tight budget, and one of our favourite suppliers was Screwfix Direct, because they guarantee next day delivery. We certainly weren't snobbish about buying from DIY stores if we could save some money, and we tried never to pay more than half price for anything. One or two items, such as our Conran dining table and sculpture, make everything else look far more expensive than it really is."

Stuart and his partner, Susan, have doubled the size of their conventional 1930s house, remodelling the interiors to create stylish and contemporary white spaces. "We looked for a project house and viewed several properties before finding this one," Stuart continues. "The interiors hadn't been touched since the 1960s, and were still decorated with embossed Anaglypta wallpapers and flowery carpets, but the main bedroom and living room were well proportioned, with wide square bay windows, so we put in an offer of £265,000 and bought it."

Stuart and Susan hired skips and completely stripped out the modestly sized house, which had a living room, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor with three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. "When we first moved in, we had no firm ideas about what we wanted to do," says Susan. "It was only when the rooms were empty that we realised just how crisp and square they were. We hoped to extend the house, and decided that the new part should echo these clean straight lines - which are emphasised because almost everything is white."

The couple planned to replace their single storey garage with a new kitchen and first floor guest room, and decided to add a glazed garden room to wrap around the rear of the house to provide a dining area - almost doubling the size of the original house. "I imagined a space rather like an art gallery, with folding glass doors and angled roof glazing," Stuart says. "It occurred to me that we could have a room where the whole ceiling structure rested on one tiny metal pillar so that, when the glass doors were opened, the roof would seem to hang in mid-air."

In contrast to this radical rear extension, Stuart and Susan wanted the front of the house to look like part of the original 1930s building. Everything to the right of the front door is newly built, replacing an old lean-to garage, but apart from the fact that the new section is stepped back slightly to meet planning conditions, it is virtually impossible to see the join. They sketched their ideas and then approached an architect, who collaborated with a structural engineer, steel fabricator and the folding door supplier to ensure that every beam and glazing bar in the garden room would be perfectly aligned.

"We camped out in our bedroom from January 2002, and used the old kitchen," says Susan. "We even managed to entertain in the house, although it got pretty grim. One day we went downstairs to discover most of the walls in the kitchen had gone and there was a gale blowing through the house."

Once planning permission had been granted for the extensions the builder began work, demolishing the lean-to garage and saving the tiles from the garage roof, complete with moss, which have been reused to give an aged effect. Every new timber window is a perfect copy of the original style, double glazed to meet current building regulations.

"The house was built in 1934 of fairly modern construction with cavity brick and blockwork walls and plasterboard ceilings," says Susan. "We've matched the brickwork as closely as possible using handmade bricks, with rendered cavity blockwork walls and lots of steelwork for the rear extension."

The lighting was changed to 12-volt spotlights, which cost just £1.25 each from Screwfix. Zoned underfloor heating has been laid in the new parts of the house, with a condensing boiler and thermal store in the utility room, and all of the wiring and plumbing is completely concealed.

With only one bathroom on the first floor, Stuart and Susan converted the smallest of the original bedrooms into an en suite bathroom. They had set themselves a tight budget of just £10,000 to fit out the entire house, and were wary about over spending on sanitaryware, but discovered David Godwin in North London - who was able to supply everything they needed at less than half the usual price.

"We tore pictures out of magazines and took them to David, who would then find exactly what we wanted," says Stuart. "Everyone seems to be fitting twin sinks in their bathrooms, so we decided to have one massive basin with two sets of taps instead. It cost us just £1,800 to fit out the entire room, including a contemporary roll-top bath, a wall-mounted bidet and conical toilet.

The builder quoted £70,000 to complete the main shell of the building, but Stuart and Susan undertook the interior fit-out themselves with help from family and friends. Ikea kitchen units with stainless steel doors cost just £600, and had to be fitted and then taken out again in order to lay the 48m² of Spanish floor tiles which run through this room and into the dining and garden room extension beyond.

Originally, we had hoped to complete the whole project for £100,000," says Susan. "We did exceed this slightly, but feel pleased that we were able to achieve so much on such a tight budget. We never like to find out that anyone has paid less for something than we have, and enjoyed the process so much that we are now hoping to take on commissions to help design other peoples homes and gardens. All on a realistic budget, of course!"

Further reading:

• Renovating a 1930s Art Deco House
• How to Halve Your Renovation Costs
• The 20 Most Common Renovation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them