Charu Gandhi has spent more than £20,000 renovating and redesigning her home. However, unlike most people who are doing up their new property, the interior designer and her husband don’t own Alton House; they rent it.
Gandhi made the decision to move to the property in Richmond, southwest London, from their previous rental home in Chelsea to be closer to their son’s school. They chose to rent, not buy, while they got used to the area. “I didn’t know the area at all,” she says.
When Gandhi 46, went to see the house in autumn 2023, the letting agent was surprised she was interested at all. Because of its poor condition it had been on the market for six months and most prospective tenants hadn’t made it past the ground floor when looking at it.
Gandhi had all the rooms repainted. The living room is in India Yellow by Argile
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“The minute I asked to go up to the first floor, the first thing the agent asked was, ‘So what do you do?’ I said, ‘I’m an architect.’ ‘Oh, that makes sense’, they replied,” Gandhi says, laughing.
“I walked into this house and thought, ‘Oh my God, there’s a huge opportunity here,’ whereas I think everyone else who walked in thought: ‘This is a disaster.’”
As the property had been on the market for so long, and the rental price had been dropped at least once in that time, Gandhi found getting the landlord to agree to doing some essential maintenance work was easy. “We were told at our first viewing that the landlord accepted that the condition of the property needed work and they would be undertaking it once they had a firm offer agreed,” Gandhi explains.
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Before they moved in they asked for the air vents and extractor fans to be fixed, replastering to be done, checks for potential leaky pipes, carpets replaced, repairing of wooden panelling, retiling and replacement of a ground floor lintel, and all areas of damp to be investigated.
“With renting you can end up living in a bigger home than you could afford to buy,” Gandhi says
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Gandhi and her husband signed the three-year contract and moved in in February 2024. She continued to make improvements herself — the landlord was happy for them to do so — and although he subsidised some of the costs and services, they ended up spending about £20,000 of their own money over the eight-week period of work.
A lot of Gandhi’s personal expenses went into furniture, which they plan to take with them to a future home. They also paid for appliances and premium paint.
“We did a little bit of desktop research and realised that if we did buy a home in this area it would be of a similar size and perhaps a little bit smaller but not significantly,” Gandhi says. “So we decided that it was OK to do up this home, mainly with things that we would then take to a new home.”
The sleek dining room
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She still owns a flat in Notting Hill, which they rented out when they outgrew it as a family and moved to Chelsea. She met her husband in 2013 and they now have a nine-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. Gandhi is an architect by training, but moved into interior design in 2011 and has been practising a hybrid of architecture and interior design for 14 years.
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Alton House costs between £5,500 and £6,000 for them to rent each month, and is 3,200 sq ft. There are six bedrooms and three floors plus a cellar. On the ground floor there is a formal reception room, a large dining room with a conservatory attached to it, a kitchen-diner and a playroom and a powder room. On the first floor the main bedroom has an en suite bathroom and there are two further bedrooms used for their children’s rooms. Upstairs again there is a family bathroom and three more bedrooms, which are used as office and exercise spaces.
Gandhi had all the rooms repainted and spent extra on the paint so she could prioritise using bold and interesting colours.
The study is painted in Indian Terracotta by Graphenstone
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Her study has been decorated in Indian Terracotta by Graphenstone (from £29.5 for 1l), and the stairwell was painted in Pale Walnut, also by Graphenstone. The living room is in India Yellow by Argile.
They didn’t do any work to the kitchens or bathrooms, but one of the bigger investments made was changing the lighting.
“There were a series of decorative lights in the property that were very unattractive to my mind,” Gandhi says. “So I bought new lights and I paid for an electrician to remove the landlord’s pieces. This house has enough space that I have a storeroom.”
The bedroom of Gandhi’s nine-year-old son
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Another expense for Gandhi has been appliances. “When you move into a rental you often have really crappy appliances. I have gone and bought myself a really nice washing machine, because then I’ll take it to my next home.”
She reused a lot of her furniture from Chelsea, which she had repurposed. Their dining table from there has become her desk in her new study. As a designer she likes to be dynamic with her pieces, often going for vintage.
“I bought a very run-down sofa for £50 at an auction but then I was able to reupholster it and it looks amazing, because I could see that the bones of the sofa were amazing.”
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The conservatory leads out to a private garden
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Gandhi stresses that living in a rental property doesn’t have to feel like you’re living a compromised life. You can rent and still create a property that feels like home.
Contractually, they must paint the walls back to white when they leave. Typically rentals must be returned in the condition they were found in. If you’re planning to make some bigger changes to your rental, make sure you check your tenancy agreement and get written permission from your landlord to save a chunk of your deposit being lost.
The family are in no rush to look for anywhere to buy, as they are happy in Alton House, but a move is on their radar in the long term.
“With renting you can end up living in a bigger home than you could afford to buy. Stamp duty is a huge commitment and you can be more agile. You can say, ‘Oh, let’s go and try living in Richmond,’ and you can’t do that with a purchase.
“The last eight or nine years of our lives have changed a lot. I was single, we got married, we had two kids. We were working out where they go to school for where our life was going to be; it’s been amazing for us. I couldn’t say for sure whether our next move will be a purchase or another rental.”