Transforming a 1950s House into a Contemporary Home

Doubling the size of a boxy 1950s house and giving it a sleek modern makeover has netted Jon and Melek Watkins a cool half a million pounds in potential profit, even though they couldnt initially afford to buy the kind of home they really wanted.

"Melek often accused me of treating her like a labourer while we were working on our house," says Jon, "but she certainly wasn't afraid to get stuck in and have a go at everything, from tiling the roof to plastering and electrics. Although she was the smallest person on site and had no previous experience, she worked as hard as anyone and enjoyed learning the different trades."

Not only did Jon and Melek dedicate every spare moment to revamping and extending their house, they also coaxed Jon's father out of retirement as a building contractor to work as their project manager. He proved invaluable and his presence on site meant that the couple could pay directly for labour and materials which saved them a significant amount of money.

"It does help that I've been on building sites since I was in a pram and have a fairly good practical knowledge, which meant there was very little we couldn't tackle between us," Jon continues. "We rented a house in Henley so that we could be nearby and, although we brought in professionals for things like the plastering and bricklaying, we did almost everything else ourselves, which did mean that it took longer to finish than we'd planned."

When Jon and Melek first viewed the square brick property they made an almost instant decision to buy it, based partly on its quiet location in a road of detached houses in Henley-on-Thames. Built in 1954 by the previous owner, the three bedroom house had remained little changed over time, and was literally bursting with potential, a fact which saw the couple involved in a bidding war against professional developers. "We bought the house before applying for planning permission to extend, so in some ways it was a risk especially as we wanted such a modern-looking exterior," says Melek, who moved to the UK from Turkey five years ago.

"Luckily Jon already knew Jeremy Spratley, a local architect who has an excellent reputation with the planners, so we knew exactly who to turn to for help." Initially, the couple applied to extend the modest property right up to the site boundaries to either side - a concept which the planners refused to contemplate. Amending the design by reducing the overall size of the extensions gained approval, however, and Jon and Melek set about demolishing virtually the entire property leaving only two external walls still standing.

Footings were dug for the two-storey side extension, a glass box was added to the rear of the house and the roof was stripped and re-cut to incorporate dormer windows enabling a fourth bedroom and en-suite bathroom to be constructed under sloping eaves on the newly formed second floor.

The house has been clad in a combination of cedar boarding, render and brickwork, with a contemporary entrance porch and new grey painted timber windows. "Ideally, I would have liked to build an all-white box," admits Jon, "but we wanted the house to fit in with older properties in the street, so we re-used the existing concrete roof tiles which were mixed with new tiles for a uniform finish, and the brickwork was also designed to look traditional right down to the mortar."

Despite these concessions the house is still unquestionably modern a fact which occasionally concerned Jons more traditional father. "He wondered why we wanted full-height doors and shadow gaps instead of architrave, but he was more than happy to take on board our ideas," Jon recalls.

"Our plan was to create as much light as possible with large amounts of glazing, and to use pale, reflective materials such as glass splashbacks and balustrades, limestone tiles in the bathrooms and white high-gloss kitchen units with silestone worktops for a really contemporary feel. Open plan living was high on the agenda, and virtually the entire ground floor has been knocked together to form a spacious kitchen/dining/living room which overlooks the rear garden through a single storey, aluminium-framed glass extension, with a glazed roof and a wall of folding sliding glass doors opening out onto the patio. It does sometimes mean you need to wear sunglasses to watch the TV," says Jon.

"Someone warned us we would never bother to push back the glazing, but they were wrong. We have the doors open most of the time, which makes the room feel even larger. Another benefit of having an open plan space is that you can move the furniture around very easily, so in the winter we can make the fireplace the focal point of the room."

This modern hole-in-the-wall open fireplace was actually a home-made affair which utilises the existing chimney. Adapting items to fit became a preoccupation with the Watkins, who were keen to remain below their maximum budget of £200,000. "There's a huge amount of hidden steelwork involved in holding up the house, which would have cost several thousand pounds to buy new, but Dad paid just £200 for some scrapyard steel which had come out of an old factory," says Jon. "Our radiators were reclaimed and sandblasted, and we used the leftover oak floorboards upstairs in the new en suite bathroom to box in the bath and make a shelf for the sink."

Inevitably there were some low points, and a burglary saw £10,000 of freshly delivered materials taken from the house. Months of hard work finally paid off, however, when Jon and Melek were able to move into their spacious home, but even then there was still no time to relax.

"Finishing our house, getting married and expecting a baby all in one year has been quite a chaotic time for us," explains Melek, "but we've ended up with a fantastic family home which we could otherwise never have afforded to buy without the renovation works."

Further reading:

• An Eco Friendly New England Style Home
• A 1970s Home Remodelled
• From 1970s house to Contemporary Family Home