Labour of love: Layla Pouri and Alex Gill transformed their Canonbury terrace
(Picture: Juliet Murphy)Over the past two years, Layla and Alex have worked to breathe fresh life into a tired Canonbury terrace. After a mammoth renovation they have created a home which they enjoy every day. And to them that represents an important win.
During a long lockdown walk Layla, 31, and Alex, 36, discovered a quiet and leafy street in Canonbury lined with Georgian-style terraced houses.
The couple were renting, paying £3,000pcm for a two bedroom flat in Islington, and were keenly aware that they were throwing their money away. When they got home they casually looked online to see if any of the houses might be for sale, and found that one was.
“It felt like fate,” said Layla, project manager for a logistics company.
They loved the house just as much when they went to see it, in spring 2020. “It was very tired inside but we could see the potential,” said Layla.
With three bedrooms, the couple felt the house was more than big enough for them and their two year old French bulldog Margot, and they paid £1.25m for the property in August 2020.
They decided to move straight in, so they could get to know the property, and rethink its awkward layout.
There was only one bathroom, which was dark and dated, and since the house had been rented for several years, the whole vibe was rather careworn.
There was no hallway, so the front door opened straight onto a kitchen at the front of the house, with a living room and a leaky retro conservatory overlooking the garden.
Calling in the experts
After doing a bit of painting and a lot of cleaning to make the house liveable Layla and Alex, who works in commercial property, hired local practice Scenario Architecture (scenarioarchitecture.com/) to completely redesign the existing layout and rethink a traditional conservatory.
Doing a rear extension was ruled out because of a local covenant and planning regulations (it is in a conservation area) so Scenario suggested flipping the kitchen and living room and replacing the Nineties conservatory with a modern glass and steel glazed extension with a beautiful, but complex, stepped roofline to create a focal point for a large open plan kitchen.
For the living room they designed a sensuously curved wall to hide the flue for a modern open fireplace and to make sure the room got as much light as possible they suggested a glass powder coated aluminium door and a window through to the kitchen (also bespoke).
“We wanted something quite unique, and Scenario went to town,” said Layla. “The extension in particular is the showpiece of the house. We wanted something with some wow factor.”
The plans also added a ground floor toilet, and general upgrades including rewiring and replumbing, redecorating, and replacing the bathroom.
What it cost
Three-bed house in Canonbury (August 2020): £1.25 million
Original renovation estimate: £200,000
Actual total cost of renovation: £500,000
Estimated value of house now: £1.6 million
Layla and Alex’s determination to avoid a boring glass box extension has been achieved by creating a bespoke space with five different root heights, and almost a dozen large panes of glass.
The result is certainly aesthetically spectacular with its monumental bronze-toned metal columns and intricate glass panels, and creates distinctive areas whilst meeting Alex and Layla’s needs for warm, light social spaces.
But its £75,000 cost helped push prices up. By the time builders’ tenders started coming out it was clear that the build was going to cost closer to £350,000 (excl VAT).
“We didn’t realise at the start how many implications the design and specification was going to have,” says Alex.
Attention to detail
In July 2021 Layla and Alex decamped to a flat in Stratford to sit out the work, which was initially scheduled to take six months.
It ended up taking more than eight months.
“We changed our minds about the bathroom tiles quite late on in the process, and the ones we chose came from Italy and had a 12-week lead time,” says Alex.
Another add on which added time and money to the project was the decision to replace the old-fashioned, period style staircase with a more delicate, modern timber and metal version.
“It was something we had to do to achieve the aesthetic we wanted,” says Alex.
Alex and Layla’s deep blue painted timber kitchen with its Italian marble worktop, splashback and built-in bar area cost £50,000.
“There were lots of little things we wanted, like the door and the window in the living room to be the same colour of the extension,” says Layla.
“There is a snowball effect – once you’ve invested in getting one thing exactly how you want it, you don’t want to compromise on something else.”
In the final analysis the high specification of the house, plus extras like their rent in Stratford, furnishings, and professional fees pushed the final budget up to circa £500,000.
Great quality materials – from the limestone flooring in the kitchen to the marble tiles in the bathroom – are both classic and durable. “I like to think that the fundamentals of the house are right,” says Alex.
Layla and Alex have made a long term commitment to living in London and so they see the property as investment not in their bank balances but in their future.
“I know a lot of people have been moving out to the country and buying something bigger but we would rather stay in London, in a smaller house that we really love and have done for ourselves,” says Alex.
