Since Chi-Chi Baber got the keys to her Victorian terrace house in Clapton, east London, 16 years ago, the property has lived several lives. It started as a house share, matured into a family home, and now it’s a fully optimised, design-led space following an 11-month renovation that saw the addition of a side return, a loft conversion and solar panels.
Baber, the founder of the interior design practice Lomax & Chi, bought the three-bedroom property when she was single in 2010. “It hadn’t been touched for about 30 years, but it was big, with a south-facing garden and large sash windows. It had been empty for a couple of years, but it didn’t feel unloved when I looked around it,” she remembers.
The designer, 50, had a modest budget to work with, so she took on many of the early improvements herself (her employer at the time allowed her to drop to a three-day week).
“I was living in Surrey, working in Battersea, doing the house up in Hackney and sleeping on friends’ floors – with Sundays off,” she explains. Aside from help from a plumber and an electrician, Baber gutted the house herself, laid floors and filled walls. An en-suite bathroom was added and the kitchen was moved from the basement up to the ground floor. Once it was in a liveable state, she rented rooms out to friends – “to help with the mortgage” – for several years. In 2012, she met her soon-to-be husband, Piers, who eventually moved in.