{"id":753153,"date":"2026-08-29T03:04:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T03:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/753153\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T03:04:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T03:04:15","slug":"this-interior-designer-spent-16-years-and-530000-transforming-her-london-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/753153\/","title":{"rendered":"This interior designer spent 16 years and \u00a3530,000 transforming her London home"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>, and now it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Baber, the founder of the interior design practice Lomax & Chi, bought the three-bedroom property when she was single in 2010. \u201cIt hadn\u2019t 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\u2019t feel unloved when I looked around it,\u201d she remembers.<\/p>\n

The designer, 50, had a modest budget to work with, so she took on many of the early improvements herself<\/a> (her employer at the time allowed her to drop to a three-day week).<\/p>\n

\u201cI was living in Surrey, working in Battersea<\/a>, doing the house up in Hackney and sleeping on friends\u2019 floors \u2013 with Sundays off,\u201d 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 \u2013 \u201cto help with the mortgage\u201d \u2013 for several years. In 2012, she met her soon-to-be husband, Piers, who eventually moved in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since Chi-Chi Baber got the keys to her Victorian terrace house in Clapton, east London, 16 years ago,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,133958,96,15187,32649,655,124337,5438,56,43259,54,55,157732],"class_list":["post-753153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-east-london","tag-entertainment","tag-housing-market","tag-interiors","tag-lifestyle","tag-self-build","tag-standard","tag-uk","tag-uk-property","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}