'I decided to go BACK TO BASICS'

Having been guided by the style of her Edwardian home, Derya has sensitively renovated each room to create a characterful vibe

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Having lived in three different new-build homes, we’re now firmly in the “old and characterful” camp,’ says Derya. ‘We bought an Edwardian house in Nottingham and it wasn’t so much a conscious decision but in this part of Nottingham most houses tend to be old.

We were relocating from Leicestershire for Reshid’s job and with two young children, having three good-sized bedrooms on one floor was a priority, along with a garden and open-plan kitchen-diner. When we saw this place, I was really impressed by the beautiful front door, as well as the big entrance hall and stained glass interior doors.

Getting to work

We moved in just before Christmas 2020 and building work began the following spring on a top-down renovation. In the first few months, we could quickly see which spaces weren’t working – for example, there was only one small dated bathroom with no shower, so we knew we wanted to add more bathrooms.

IN THE FRAME 'We've painted the doors a mustard tone because we wanted them to frame the dining room nicely as you look in from the hallway

Because the house had six bedrooms, we didn’t mind sacrificing one of them to create a new family bathroom and so we turned the old bathroom into an en suite off of Erdem’s bedroom. Two small, dark bedrooms on the top floor were also knocked together to make one big, bright guest room with an additional en suite and fitted wardrobes. This meant some old water cylinders could be stripped out and new ones relocated to the cellar, which freed up lots of space.