Remodelling a Terraced House

The Victorian terrace is perhaps the most recognisable and treasured of British period properties, offering up a wealth of original features to loving, faithful restorers — but when it came to renovating their own home, Phil and Tamsyn Coffey challenged every design principle.

Of all the house types that line Britain’s streets, the Victorian terrace has to be the most familiar. And perhaps it is this familiarity that has made us so immune to several of its drawbacks: the tight squeeze of the hall corridor, the often lightless back reception room and the tiny scullery that runs behind it. A pretty bay window and a few ceiling roses are usually enticing enough for the average housebuyer to sacrifice a few home comforts in the name of period property character.

It’s hard to say whether this layout suited the 19th century workers who were herded into row upon row of these little terraces. But what is true to say is that the bijou rooms and tiny rear windows bear little relation to the open plan, light-soaked, bring-the-garden-intothe- house look that many of us aspire to live with.

For most people who manage to buy one of these urban properties, the solution to its obvious drawbacks has long been apparent: knock through the two reception rooms and build into the side return (if you can afford it). With any luck, the bathroom will already be upstairs, if not, more money goes on somehow configuring it – usually at the cost of bedroom space – into the first floor. Admittedly, this doesn’t address the tiny corridor passageway, and the double reception room isn’t always very useful as the back end is generally still dark but, all in all, it’s better than it was and at least there’s those lovely ceiling roses to admire.

So, hurrah for Phil Coffey who threw away the rulebook when renovating his two-up, two-down terrace in London’s Highbury. He has created one of the most original and successful reworkings of this awkward interior H&R has ever encountered. No under-used corners, no daylight-starved recesses, no cramped areas. And it works.

“We wanted what everyone wants — plenty of light, privacy and some greenery,” says Phil, who runs his own architecture practice, Phil Coffey Architects. “In the end, it’s just two party walls and whatever you want to do between them.”

What he and his wife, Tamsyn, did between these walls was pretty much everything they could in order to end up with a simple and quite revolutionary take on the original floorplan of the unexceptional terrace. All the internal walls were removed on the ground floor and the layout was squared off and extended at the rear, a new, open staircase was installed and the kitchen was brought from the back of the house to where the front parlour would have once been. The level of the back reception room was lowered to bring it down to the old scullery height and make the ceiling significantly higher and more private, while huge glass doors were brought in at the rear leading to a tiny, bamboo-filled courtyard.

It’s certainly refreshing whilst being utterly logical but, for some reason, quite unlike anything the judges had seen before. Due to its unchanged frontage – London stocks: check; bay window: check – the interior feels wonderfully unexpected, and this is not solely down to the intelligent use of space but also to the brave palette of materials. The walls have been stripped back to bare bricks and concrete is a significant presence. The floor of the main living space is polished concrete and there is a chunk of poured concrete peeping just above the kitchen counter and separating it from the rest of the ground floor and around the walls. Phil has also made a virtue of the underpinning required to dig down a metre by leaving it undressed as a sort of raw, industrial-looking skirting board. “I’m a big fan of Modernist architecture — the solid stuff that doesn’t rattle when you hit it,” he says, “and I wanted to emphasise light rather than the cleverness of the materials.”

It is spectacular and all the more so because so much has been fitted into such a tiny space, but without any of the cramp and compromise that would seem inevitable with a house this size — its ground floor is a mere 47m2. Light pours in through the vast foldaway glass doors onto the terrace and also from the glazed roof over the old side return (Phil has kept the roof flat so that puddles gather on the glass, casting interesting shadows into the room). A sweep of smart but unobtrusive white cabinetry matches the kitchen units and ends at a corner junction with an extraordinarily elegant steel and concrete fireplace notch seemingly carved out of nowhere.

The small outside space at the back is the only slight disappointment, yet Phil makes an asset of its compact size. Having clad the area in long lengths of vertical oak and paved it with yet more concrete, it does genuinely feel like another room and is used as such. “We have meals out here,” says Phil. “When it snows, it’s beautiful.”

The ground floor alone is a treat but there have also been changes upstairs. Although the first floor remains largely as it was in layout – two bedrooms and a bathroom – great gains have been made in terms of storage. The white cabinetry familiar from downstairs makes a reappearance and even tiny areas are used as storage, such as a dead wall dividing the top of the stairs from the bathroom which has had a cupboard built into it. The bathroom has been revamped to make it much lighter and, curiously, the tub itself has been raised about 50cm — “It’s a bit more heroic,” says Phil by way of an explanation.

However, it is the loft extension that is the most arresting addition to the whole property. Accessed by a beautifully engineered glass staircase, that brings light back down through the house, it’s so much more than the usual afterthought under the roof. The room combines an office area with a guest bed and (with yet more white cupboards) as well as a discreet utility area.

Light pours in from a glass void in the ceiling and, although conventionally sized, the windows are bifolding and, when open, seem to connect you with the sky, the rooftop view and the inescapable bulk of nearby Emirates Stadium.

And it’s this very view that meant the couple were able to get the house in the first place. Initially attracted by its peacefulness (the road is a dead-end) when they discovered it by chance down a pedestrian cut-through, it was one of those happily settled streets from which residents rarely move away. However, the prospective relocation of Arsenal to their new ground had frightened some locals enough to mean that a few ‘For Sale’ boards had popped up. The area was relatively cheap and Phil felt a certain nostalgia towards the properties as they were so similar to the ones his family lived in on Merseyside.

As the neighbourhood was about to be designated as a Conservation Area, the couple raced to get their plans through under Permitted Development rights, to avoid any hindrance from future restrictions. The house had been well and truly magnoliaed by its previous owner and was perfectly acceptable to those not of an architectural bent. “I can’t handle living in a box. The layout needed to flow,” says Phil. “It’s a very simple space but there are a number of difficult aspects within it.” Indeed, the triple-height space over the stairwell and the sheer horror of trying to fit everything in with some degree of style proved challenging. “I wanted the eye to be drawn out or up at every point, so that you will always see sunlight and height.” Phil continues: “We took a long time building up models to get it right. Maybe it’s because I’m not a genius but, you know, it really doesn’t come easily.” Revolutions rarely do.

WHY IT WON

This project was the unanimous winner of the judges’ votes for this year’s Best Renovation award because Phil has managed to take an unexceptional, ordinary – and small – standard house shape and create something quite extraordinary within its walls. The ambition and vision displayed really were second to none, and because it has all been achieved within a relatively modest budget for what was a complete gut-andrebuild job, it still made financial sense. Phil has worked within very strict constraints but pushed them to the absolute limit, really thinking about why things needed to go where and coming up with a raft of innovative design solutions to standard problems — not least of which is the glass staircase which helps to get light into the house (these houses are notoriously dark). It’s a perfect home for a modern young family in the city — and a beacon of hope to the thousands of terrace-dwellers who dream of light and space but had never previously thought it possible to achieve something on this radical but ultimately sensible scale.

Further reading:

• A remodelled 1950s bungalow
• Renovating a 1930s Art-Deco house
• How to extend and remodel terraced homes

Find out more about the Homebuilding & Renovating Awards