Renovating a Victorian terrace

Moving from Brighton to Cambridge in 2004, interior designers Jonathan and Rivka Furbank were looking for a place they could put down roots. The couple had set their hearts on a small, traditional Victorian house that they could renovate using their design ideas and practical skills.

However, in the competitive Cambridge housing market, they found it more difficult than they had imagined. “We thought it would be easy,” says Rivka. “But we looked at 60 properties and put down offers on four before we were finally successful.” Eventually they had to compromise on the area to get a house that was affordable — although the quiet street is only a five-minute cycle ride away from the city centre. When they first viewed the house, built around 1900, Jonathan and Rivka loved the fact that no one had made much of an indentation into its fabric. All the fireplaces were still intact, the sash window frames – whilst in need of repair – remained, and there was a stunning 1920s Crittall metal window at the rear of the house. “It was perfect,” remembers Jonathan. “We didn’t have to rip out any 1970s updates, apart from a set of steep space-saving paddle stairs up to the attic, so we had a pretty blank canvas.”

The young couple set to with energy and enthusiasm, doing all the work themselves, from knocking down walls to refurbishing every sash window. But the project would be a lengthy one and four years of DIY were not without their drawbacks. “The most difficult thing was living there while we did the work,” Rivka admits. “We washed up in a plastic bucket for months and had to camp, moving from room to room as we went. It was exhausting.”

Incredibly, the pair were working on the redesign and project management of Jonathan’s parents’ hotel at the same time, so work on their own house was necessarily slow. “We had to take our time,” Rivka says. “We were building our business as we went, so it was a very intense time.”

For this they needed an office, and the dilapidated rear lean-to – in which the old kitchen and bathroom had been squeezed – provided plentiful scope. “By ripping out the kitchen and bathroom fitments, and taking down the wall between the two rooms, I made space for a light-filled garden room we could use as an office,” Jonathan explains. One of the bedrooms was sacrificed so that a roomy family bathroom could be installed upstairs, and the couple were relieved to find it was big enough for a separate shower. Once this was done, the new office was re-roofed with double-glazed glass panels that the couple commissioned locally.

Indeed, the object of the renovation was to open up the rooms and let in as much light as possible. Jonathan and Rivka were also keen to open up the ground floor to alleviate the tiny floor space. To achieve the airy look they wanted, the wall between the two reception rooms was – with the advice of a structural engineer – taken down. The resulting opening is wider than normal and looks less like two rooms knocked through than one big open plan area.

Jonathan was also keen to brick up the doorway leading from the hall to the front room. “I always dislike seeing a sofa in front of an unused door,” he explains. The couple’s creative background came to the fore when they conceived the idea of piercing the living room wall with a semicircular window they found at an architectural salvage yard. It’s an unusual place to put a window but is another example of the couple’s resolution to flood the small house with light. “Internal windows help to open up spaces even more,” Jonathan asserts. “We always think they aren’t used enough.”

It was when the new water supply was brought in from the street and metres of old lead pipe pulled out – to be replaced by modern plastic pipes – that Jonathan admits that the house’s age really worked against them. “I found myself in the middle of what was to be our kitchen, with half the floorboards ripped up, digging down half a metre into wet soil between the joists,” he now laughs. “These houses are not built on a concrete raft, just low brick footings and joists laid onto bare earth.”

Under the many layers of hardboard, ply, tiles and felt which Jonathan lifted up, the wide pitch pine floorboards were, however, in surprisingly good condition throughout the ground floor. “We like to keep the authenticity of materials wherever possible, so after we had sanded the floors, we oiled them with Danish oil which gives a wonderfully warm, natural feel to the rooms,” Jonathan explains.

To complete the ground floor, both Jonathan and Rivka had always wanted an AGA, and although friends advised against it on the grounds it would overheat such a small house, they claim that with the stairs opening up from the kitchen, it has been one of the best things they did. “We loved the idea of an AGA,” says Rivka. “But a new one seemed out of reach until we asked everyone to contribute to a reclaimed model as a wedding present. The chimney breast in the kitchen was opened up to make space for it, and once the bricks were removed it was possible to see where the original Victorian coal-burning range had stood.”

“The wall was completely blackened behind,” says Jonathan. “We had to pour in a plinth of solid concrete to stand the AGA on, which I mixed myself two weeks before the fitting date.”

Panelling that had originally boxed in the stairs was removed at this stage, too. “We opened up the stairs and installed a new handrail, spindles and newel post, which gives the house a more elegant look,” explains Rivka. “Ideally we would have liked to have finished the banister rail in a graceful curve, as we have seen in some grander houses in Cambridge, but the price made it way out of our league. But we are delighted with the way the new rail and spindles have given the entrance a much more classic feel.”

Upstairs required less physical work, but the tiny attic space, already lit by a pair of Velux windows, was reached by a steep set of paddle stairs leading out of the master bedroom. To make a separate entrance to what was to be the third bedroom, it was necessary to pull out the tiny toilet on the landing and knock a hole through the ceiling into the attic. Jonathan designed and made the new staircase himself, which sits neatly over the existing staircase, with a fire door at the bottom to comply with Building Regulations.

As the project neared completion, Rivka was pregnant with daughter India, and wasn’t able to help as much as she would have liked, so Jonathan worked alone in the final stages. After he stripped the walls of the hessian wallpaper – that appeared to be holding them together – the plaster began to crumble away, so every wall in the house needed skimming with a coat of plaster to give a firm surface for painting. “The only contractor we employed was a plasterer,” Jonathan says. The rooms were then painted in off-white tones to enhance the sense of space.

Both Jonathan and Rivka have a few tips they would pass onto other renovators. “It was pretty rough going,” says Jonathan. “If we were to work on a major renovation again, we would definitely rent somewhere else to live while we did the major structural work — it was much more difficult than we had imagined. And fitting an outside tap before we removed all the plumbing would have been a great help.” But it seems the couple haven’t been put off. Soon after the house was finally finished, they saw a cottage in the country that they are now restoring with the same care and attention. “But without the camping,” they laugh.

Further reading:

• Remodelling a London terrace
• Extending an end-of-terrace cottage
• Remodelling a terraced house