In theory, good renovations reward patience. This one, however – a full overhaul of a Victorian terrace in Queen’s Park, north London – took just six months from brief to the clients moving in; and yet nothing about it feels hurried. Instead, the cleverly reimagined spaces are considered, cohesive and wonderfully personal.
The credit goes to Annabel Harrison, who, as founder of design studio Fare Inc, is also responsible for the interiors of some of the capital’s most talked about eateries, among them the Sri Lankan spot Kolamba in Soho, the Palestinian restaurant Akub in Notting Hill, and the City outpost of pasta emporium Lina Stores. Each was masterminded alongside a stream of equally smart residential jobs, and so when the owners of this three-bedroom house asked Annabel to design it (having found her through The List by House & Garden), they got a designer used to working precisely and at pace. ‘It was a major challenge, and the fastest project we’ve ever done, which was great because decisions were made quickly,’ says Annabel. ‘It also pushed us to be really creative.’
The hallway, painted in Atelier Ellis’s ‘Tea & Toast’, is home to a vintage Chinese console shipped from Belgium, while a bare, stripped-back wall runs the height of the staircase.
Milo Hutchings
The previous owners had used the house as much as a workspace as a home, and had stripped it out accordingly. ‘It was very stark and grey. There were no original features and spotlights everywhere: a classic rip-out-and-do-as-cheaply-as-possible job,’ Annabel recalls. As such, the brief was to bring in a neutral palette with hints of blue and green, and to restore sympathetically what might once have been there, while at the same time adding in elements from the couple’s Chinese and British heritage. ‘They met in Singapore and have lived all over the world. They still travel all the time, so creating a sanctuary that they could come home to was important, as was creating a space where both sides of their narrative come together,’ Annabel notes.
The hallway, painted in Atelier Ellis‘s ‘Tea & Toast’, is home to a vintage Chinese console shipped from Belgium. This sits beneath newly reinstated cornicing and architraves, while a stripped-brick wall, which was already in situ, runs the height of the staircase. The formerly orange-toned floorboards and stairs were sanded and stained a rich espresso shade.