Turn back the clock

Sometimes we have to look back to step forward. This home was stripped of its ultra-modern interior - and it has never looked better

- Natasha Radmehr

DETAILS

What A refurbished 1930s house

Where Hampstead, London

Interior design TG Studio

Fixer-uppers don’t often have a sleek Bulthaup kitchen or walls clad in microcement. Their gardens aren’t newly landscaped, nor do their staircases have stainless-steel balustrades. But when the art historian and curator who now owns this property first viewed what would become her family home, she knew she would be making significant changes.

Yes, the house had been renovated and was in immaculate, turnkey condition – but it simply wasn’t to her taste. The location, close to Hampstead Heath, was ideal, as were the bones of the 1930s building. “But I just didn’t relate to the contemporary interior,” she explains. “I wanted the original features back; the cornicing, the panelling…”

More of a turner-backer than a conventional fixer-upper, then, and not the sort of request ordinarily made of Thomas Griem, director of interior architecture and design firm TG Studio. But he was game. “Although the house was really well done, it felt a bit soulless,” he recalls. “It had floor-to-ceiling aluminium windows, engineered floorboards, plain doors. It was interesting to think about how we could turn back time by removing the modern interventions and returning its more traditional design elements.”