A UK Designer's Historic Seaside Home Layered with Eclectic Finds - HOUSE TOUR - 4K

Hi Homeworthy, I'm Brooke. Welcome to my home. Today we're touring the seaside home of UK-based interior designer Brooke Copp Barton. In search of a holiday house within easy reach of London, she and her family were drawn to the historic coastal town of Whitstable. She was instantly enamored with this Victorian terraced house only five minutes from the ocean, but knew a full-scale renovation would be necessary. Determined to restore its original character, Brooke thoughtfully reinstated period details that had been stripped away, layering in her signature lived-in eclectic style to bring the home back to life. I went to a local salvage yard and found the fireplace surround. We then laid tiles on both hearths, so we used Zelige kind of handmade Moroccan tiles. We put back in the fireplace surround and then obviously put in a wood-burning stove to, you know, make it a real fireplace. To watch Brooke's full home tour ad-free, scan the QR code on screen or visit homeworthyplus.com for access to all of our latest episodes ad-free and to receive other exclusive membership perks. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. I'm Alison Kenworthy, the founder of Homeworthy, and we take you inside the world's most beautifully decorated homes and introduce you to the brilliant people who live there. Hi, Homeworthy. I'm Liz Lang. Welcome to Grey Gardens. Click the join button below to access all of our latest episodes ad-free and watch extended cuts of this and other homes, opening the doors to new rooms and exclusive content featuring our beloved hosts. I can't wait to see them. I'm so excited. And if you're looking to shop items inspired by this and other Homeworthy tastemakers, be sure to use the product links below or scan the QR code on screen to find fabulous furniture, coffee table books, and accessories that can transform your house into a home. Hi, I'm Brooke Cott-Barton. I'm an interior designer and you're here in my home in Whitstable. So we have loved Whitstable for many years. We were coming here with a family for kind of family holidays. In fact, I think actually it was my sister-in-law, Tara, who introduced us to Whitstable. It's like an array of like independent stores and restaurants and, you know, seaside vibes. And we just wanted to find a place that we could call our own, that we could, you know, renovate from scratch that we would then have to come and visit in the holidays. So we started a search. We knew we wanted a period home. We knew we wanted, in this area, there's lots of Victorian terraces. And this was the street we wanted to be in because we're literally five minutes from the sea and five minutes from the high street. So yeah, we looked at a few, but this is the one that I knew as soon as I walked into. I think it was the space, actually, in this living area. The fact that we could easily make a kind of double reception area and a place kind of big enough for, you know, families to, you know, share holiday space and holiday time. So yeah, this is the one that we chose. We spend as much time as we can. We love it. The family, it's just such a family space for us. So we will come one week of every school holidays. So my kids are 12 and 14. So we will come one week after Christmas, which is a time when, you know, there's been that kind of mad rush, kind of getting everyone ready for Christmas. And then for us, it's just this kind of calming break. So we come and kind of unwind here and then we'll spend a week at Easter. We'll spend a week in the summer. We also try and spend half times here as well when we can. Yeah. So we grab as much time here as possible. So here we are in the entrance hall. So this is when you first come into the home. So what I loved about this space is that you can see all the way through to the kitchen and the garden. And there was originally a door here into the living room. And we were never going to use that because we wanted to put a big sofa in a big kind of sitting area. So we filled the door in and created window glazing, which we added so that immediately you get a much greater sense of space and light as you come in. And previously, this kind of hallway was quite dark and dingy. So bringing the light in just makes it altogether more welcoming. And then we've kind of started the space with my favourite colours. So we have this kind of lovely kind of blue green on the walls. And actually, this is this little green pleat, which we've used throughout on the doors and stairs and elsewhere as you move around the house. And I found this kind of gorgeous vintage runner to kind of feel quite welcoming when you come in, which also matches our red front door. And then just kind of taking that red thread upstairs with a runner. We did actually, when we bought the house, there were no banisters. It would have been knocked through. I don't quite understand why. So I wanted to kind of just replicate what would have been here originally. So we had a newel post made and new banisters put in, so that it just felt more authentic to the kind of bones of the home. And we also replaced the front door, which was again not appropriate to the kind of period of the home. And I was able to kind of source from an antique market, a reclaimed door that we painted red, obviously. And I sourced some old cathedral glass, stained glass panels to go in the original door. So I love finding vintage pieces for the home. So this is like a vintage mirror that we found in a market. There's still space for art to find. There's a big gap there that I'm waiting to find the right thing for. But here, Whitstable, it's obviously right by the sea. And in 1953, there were like these huge storms and floods. So these actually are shots of our street when it was in the floods. So you can kind of see people being rescued on boats and so forth. And our local pub, the old Neptune, is kind of being battered by winds and waves. So I just liked kind of bringing some of the history of the area into the home. Whitstable is our happy place. We didn't want to put too many kind of seaside references into the interiors. So there's just like a little nod to its heritage and its location through those photos. But we chose these lights so that it's not overtly lit when you come in. But when they're on, they just give like a lovely glow down the walls that kind of helps to kind of create ambiance. And we wanted to choose, you know, a kind of warm, living metal finish. So again, it's not too pristine, that it feels quite age appropriate for the home. I would say my design style is fairly eclectic. I like, I love spaces to feel lived in. I don't want it to feel like a show home. I want it to feel like it's a real space. The cushions don't have to be all plumped. It can be like, you know, really lived in. I like vintage furniture. I like the idea that the furniture has been pre-loved by someone else before it made it here. I like the fact that we can, you know, put cups down and it doesn't matter. It's not going to mess it up. And, you know, I like that there's a bit of character to everything that's here. So yeah, we have gathered, I've just tried to kind of gather different pieces from different eras. A lot of the furniture here has been found at antique or vintage markets. And I like mixing textures. And so I love the kind of the vintage rugs with the velvet sofa with the kind of linen ottoman. And I enjoy being surrounded by colour. That makes me happy. So I think kind of throughout the home, you'll probably see my favourite colours on display. So I love red. It's warm. And yeah, there's a kind of red thread that kind of weaves the space together, I think. So now we're going to take you into the open plan living area. So this is the living room. And I think this area is kind of what sold us on the house when we first found it. Because it kind of it spreads. So this is perhaps the traditional living room. That is the middle reception area. So it allows us to have kind of two seating areas. So this is obviously where we watch our telly. And the other half of the room is kind of more for reading or contemplation or, you know, kids playroom. We have various kind of toys and things that we've kind of gathered over time. When we first bought the home, the windows were old. Well, they were kind of PVC, kind of, they just weren't very nice. So we, the first job we did actually in the whole house was to replace all of the original sashes. So we did the front bay window, we did the two windows upstairs, we put original kind of wooden sash. We wanted with everything in the house, we wanted to do it as respectfully to the period of the home as possible. So we kind of reinstated the coving and ceiling and the ceiling roses, we put back in fireplaces that have been stripped out, we put back in the windows. But, you know, I wanted to kind of just make it just just give a little twist. And that's kind of why we added color to the windows and the frames so that it's just a little bit of perhaps the unexpected in some of the details that we were putting back in. So I was looking for a beautiful kind of vintage rug. So this is a Moroccan vintage piece that we found that was kind of perfect for the space. And color wise, kind of warm kind of pinks and little touches of green and gray and blue in there as well. And then we found I wanted to find some old pieces to reupholster. And we picked a kind of not quite boot play, but I like those mixtures of textures. So this is kind of it's got a beautiful weave to it. We then kind of mix that with some linen with some velvet and then some kind of cushions just to kind of so it's not all samey so that it just feels a bit more lived in. A lot of the pieces you find in here are from markets. So this and the little side table and the standard lamp, they're all kind of vintage pieces that we've collected. I spent a lot of time scouring different antiques markets to kind of find some beautiful pieces to go in here. I think perhaps one of my favorites is the sideboard and also just this artwork. I think there's a lot of kind of there's a kind of real kind of strong mix of old and new in here. And for me, this is obviously a modern piece of art. But I quite like that juxtaposition of the kind of slightly grittier backdrop with some of the prettier details. And also the fact that this just brings me joy, just this kind of just a dancing lady in the middle of nowhere. That means that joy can be found anywhere. And then I also love this piece, which when we were doing up the house, we wanted to, you know, find some local artists to kind of help, you know, make the space feel authentic to Whitstable. There's a gallery that kind of does pop up events called the Show Off Gallery down in the town. And there was an artist, a local artist called Liz Shedden, who was exhibiting there. And yeah, I just loved her pieces. And she ended up, you know, coming here, seeing the home, seeing what we'd done with the space. And she, we commissioned this piece to, you know, make this, this room feel joyful. And then this end of the room, I call this my husband's area of the room. This is his kind of a nod to Manchester. So we have Stanley Chow prints on the walls. We have Joy Division. We have, it just feels like this was, you know, one of his kind of pride and joys. So yeah, there's, you know, there's different influences with the artwork in the home. We had the option to plasterboard the fireplace in. And I think we decided that I just quite like, again, those kind of mix of textures that just leaving this brickwork exposed brings. And it, again, it just feels, it's not too perfect, not too, it just feels like it just feels warmer being exposed in that way. We did, obviously, with this fireplace, this was all bricked in when we first found the home, which was, I think, a travesty. So I went to like a local salvage yard and found the fireplace surround. We then laid tiles on both the hearths. So we used Zelige kind of handmade Moroccan tiles. We put back in the fireplace surround and then obviously put in a wood-burning stove. To, you know, make it a real fireplace. But I think having the two different fireplace areas just makes, it just makes it a bit more interesting. And this, just talking about kind of mixing old with new, this has sentimental value because it's obviously an Urkel rocking chair, but I've had that for years. And yeah, brings back happy memories of when the kids were born. And yeah, so we wanted to kind of fill the space with, you know, things that were personal to us. So when we bought this house, this was a window. So, and obviously none of that existed. So we knew we wanted to extend the kitchen. And, you know, it was our, you know, our fabulous architect. We used a Whitstable architect called Spacemaker. And we also used a local Canterbury contractor, Owen Begg, who were amazing. So we had the best team involved with our renovations. And basically they came up with, our architect came up with this kind of long kind of skylights down into the kitchen, which just adds so much light into the space. And so we opened this out completely so that we can obviously, there's now two, because it was quite a narrow home, there's the gap between the, through the hallway, which was the original way into the kitchen, it's just really quite small. So this now allows us, especially with like two families sharing the space, this now allows kind of two areas to get in and out of the kitchen. And yeah, I love that when you kind of walk through here, it's just so much, so this is our kind of cosy, warm space. And then you come in here and it suddenly just opens out and you can see the sky and it's bright and it's daylight and it's just, it just, yeah, you can see the garden and it's a slightly gloomy day today, but on a, on a beautiful sunny day, it's just absolutely gorgeous. And then the colours, seamlessly go through. When I first saw those tiles, I knew I had to have them. And then when I first saw them being laid, I was like, oh my God, that's amazing. I absolutely love the pink terrazzo floor. I think when it comes to colour, for me, it's, it's quite instinctive. I just gravitate towards what I like and I'll try different things together. And then just, you just might slightly tweak it or slightly adjust it or just feel as if it might need another pop here or there. It's, it's not something that I think about hugely. It just, I think you kind of have to go with how it makes you feel. And I think these colours in particular, the kind of soft greens and the reds and the pinks, they are certainly my, my happy colours. So this is the kitchen. And I think, as I said earlier, we, you know, we intend to, to move here and live here. So we wanted to make sure that this space, and I love cooking and we like entertaining. So we wanted to make sure the space was as cosy as possible and as practical and would kind of stand the, the kind of test of time. I think the issue within here was there was quite a lot to fit in, quite a small space. So we obviously have the kitchen, which is kind of one long run underneath the skylights. We then have our kind of tall units over there. And then the island, which gives us extra storage. But we also needed to fit in dining table for eight people. Also, I wanted a sitting area. And we wanted to kind of carve out space on the plan for a downstairs toilet and utility area. So the way we did that was to kind of effectively kind of carve out a little kind of long space that we've split into two. So that's the toilet, this is the utility with, you know, washing machine, dryer, boiler, all that kind of stuff. And then that allowed us to kind of create a little kind of banquette seating area, which is quite a space saving device for being able to seat quite a lot of people. So and I think as well, just kind of having the kind of the banquette area in that little nook makes it feel cozy. And it's it's I like the fact that in this area, the there are defined zones to find spaces. So we have our kind of dining area, we have our kind of relaxation area, which is actually one of my favorite spots in the house. I love sitting there in the morning, especially actually on a day like today when it's actually a bit gloomy. But I love just sitting in that spot with a cappuccino. And I kind of you just feel close to nature. And yeah, it just I like being able to see the sky. And then, obviously, here is is kind of our kitchen area. And I think perhaps what you know, you might know first notice about the kitchen is we weren't quite bold with the colors. We had to, we had this big pole that we couldn't get rid of. But sometimes I quite like showing the bones of a building. So here, you know, it's obviously a Victorian terrace that we've extended. So this is the kind of new extension. And I like that kind of modern with old. So I didn't want to necessarily hide the fact that that's what we've done. I like seeing so I liked the fact that we've got this kind of big industrial beam that runs all the way across, that we have this pole that's kind of keeping, you know, keeping the house, it's propping the house up. And, you know, again, my favorite colors. So I just thought, well, let's just make a feature of it. It feels, it feels warm. It feels friendly. It goes, it goes with the floor. And yeah, so we also then extended the color onto the kind of the wooden beams of the skylight to kind of just frame the space. And then we also extended that color kind of beyond into the garden. Just behind is we put an awning, like an old fashioned sun protection awning out there too. And again, that kind of just reflects the colors. And I just love how the kind of greens of the garden, you know, just work with the, it kind of just feels an extension of the living space, because it just, you know, it just seems to, the colors seem to work together. The colors in this kitchen are Edward Ballmer. I think this is red ochre from memory. This is maybe light olive green. But yeah, I love his palette. And they're sustainable. So they're very eco-friendly. And the post actually we had, so our poor builder had to, because we were adding a floor onto the house, we had to, and because this is an exposed steel, there was talk about kind of boxing in the like building, like, you know, plasterboard around the pillar. And I was like, I just want the plain pillar. And so there was like a long, you know, long saga about what we do with the beam. And there was like a gap in the beam and for fire regs, because we were putting another room on the house, we had to paint it all in intumescent paint, so that in the event of a fire, it wouldn't, you know, wouldn't melt. But yeah, it was quite, I think it was a headache for our poor builder, but we, but they were amazing. And they went above and beyond. And I'm really thrilled with how it worked out. Yeah, we went with neutrals with the rest of the space, so that we could then, you know, showcase some of the art and, and let the other colours kind of pop really. These are, I use these a lot. There's a Liege tiles that are kind of artisan made, I think they're made in Morocco. And they could just come in these, you know, beautiful, just real colours. So this one, I think it's one of the dusky pink colours. But they just have that kind of artisan feel to them. They're all irregular. Again, I don't think the tilers love them, because I think they're quite difficult to tile. But yeah, they don't look all perfect. They look, I like the fact that it's imperfect. I like there to be imperfection in interiors. I think that's what gives homes personality. So yeah, so I again, I knew I was going to have those when we were doing this kitchen. And this is one of my favourite pieces, actually. I like the little pop of red. I like the I like vintage finds. So again, that was another market find, as was my teapot. Yeah. And again, just kind of just following through with the finishes. We wanted, I mean, it's not for everybody. I like the fact that it's an old, this is a new tap, but it's an unlacquered brass, as are all the handles. So they will continue to age and develop a develop a pattern over time. But I like that look. And again, I think it's kind of age appropriate for the house. It feels lived in. It's not too perfect. And yeah, I love these taps. Budget wise, we were restricted when we were kind of doing the build. The build was a lot more expensive than we thought it was going to be when we first came to it, which is why there are still some gaps with artwork. We will fill them over time. I'm kind of waiting now to find the right pieces to fill some of the spots. But I wanted to put something up above the dining area because it was a big space to fill. And I found these, they're actually vintage ceiling tiles. And again, it's kind of just mixing different textures. You know, art doesn't have to be a painting or a photograph. It can be sometimes I quite like things that are a bit more textural, a bit more 3D that, you know, aren't necessarily flat. And then we've kind of paired that with a, you know, a little vintage find from a market in terms of the painting, the oil painting at the end. So I like kind of mixing things up a little bit. Another space saving device with this kitchen was to, we used, these were the two doors that were, the living room was originally divided into two. And there was like a doorway that, you know, opened out. But we reused these, we kept them, reused them, painted them. And just because again, we're quite pushed on space, we, rather than having them as doors that open, especially into this kind of narrow pathway to the front door, we put them on a sliding mechanism. I won't open that one because it's not very attractive inside, it's laundry. But in here, this is our downstairs toilet. And it just means that it's just, it doesn't take up any space in the house. And it was just a really great way of reusing what was already here, but also making it practical given the kind of some of the space restrictions. And this is actually one of my favourite, one of my favourite rooms in the house. It's the downstairs toilet, but it has got one of my all-time favourite wallpapers. And yeah, again, I knew that when we had the opportunity to do this house, that wallpaper was going to be in it. So obviously it is led by the wallpaper, obviously, which is a kind of mid-century Joseph Frank wallpaper. And yeah, it's just one of my all-time favourites. We, I then, we then created a basin area, again, with Silese tiles. We painted the ceiling. So this, our kind of beautiful red colour is then kind of just enveloped all over the ceiling and the skirtings. And I've got a favourite piece of art in there from Bridget Davies, and a little kind of sink curtain underneath the sink to hide the clobber that goes underneath. And another vintage find in terms of mirror from Market. So yeah, the littlest room in the house, but yeah, it's one of my favourites. Just in the hallway, we tried to use every inch of space. So we kept this deliberately open so that people can come in and dump their coats. I quite like having coats out of the way. And it meant that we didn't have to do expensive kind of coat joinery. We just have this almost like ready-made nook under the stairs where we hung vintage hooks for like coats and things, umbrella, you know, basket. And then we created just this little shelf for putting shoes. It's kind of one of my bugbears when there's no place to put shoes and stuff. So it allows us to put everything away. So we're now going to go upstairs and I'll take you into the front bedroom, the front of the house. So now we're on the first floor and you can see with the wallpaper, we've actually carried that round. So as you come upstairs, there's no obvious place for wallpaper in a hallway to stop. So I think the easiest way is just to wrap it around and it gives this kind of space. It just feels like a big hug. And then we kind of naturally finished it there because this area up here is the new extension. So this is the bit that we added to the home. So we kept the continuity by using the same colors. Again, we recreated like an old banister, like an old Newell post. So that is reflective of, again, the period of the home. And you'll see when we go upstairs, we deliberately did that slightly differently so that it felt like it's a modern extension, but done in a sympathetic way. So this is the front bedroom. And I think we're lucky in this house because as I said, it's a small little terrace. All the rooms are a decent size. They all fit double beds. And actually with the kids' rooms, we have done twin beds that kind of lock together and make double if we wanted to. But this is, I would say, one of the master bedrooms. Again, we put new windows in. These were PVC windows that we wanted to make more like the original. And all the pieces in here are sourced from, apart from the bed, all the pieces here are sourced from vintage markets. So we kept our costs down by doing it that way. And actually, what I find with vintage is that some of these pieces are just absolutely beautifully made. So whilst you're not spending a fortune, you're still getting some beautiful pieces of craftsmanship. In here, the hero of the piece is the upholstered bed. I wanted it to have a sense of grandeur a little bit. And I like how the stripes and the patterns work together. And the fireplace, again, this was another fireplace that was completely bricked up and blocked in. So this was another find where we found the fireplace downstairs, except this time we wanted to put back the original kind of, this is a combination wrought iron fireplace that we sourced from the same reclamation yard. Although it didn't look like that, it was covered in cobwebs and paint and so forth. So we, you know, not we, but our lovely builders sandblasted it and yeah, brought it back to its former glory. So in this room, it didn't feel, the ceilings are quite low. It didn't feel right to put coving in here. I don't think there would have been coving in the kind of upstairs rooms of these types of homes. So I did, however, want to finish off the height of the room. And yeah, we just used a kind of tiny piece of kind of wooden kind of dowling edging. I'm not quite sure you would call it. And just, I quite liked that definition in colour that kind of works with the kind of trim on the curtains and some of the other colours in the house. And I also, and this is actually on all of our curtains in the house, I like the fact that I didn't want it to just be plain from the outside. It's a small detail, but I didn't really want it to be plain from the outside. So I chose to have the lining of all the curtains and all the blinds in a kind of ticking stripe, just to make it a little bit different. This is my daughter's bedroom. She loves it. She loves turquoise, actually. And I didn't want to go all out turquoise. So this is a beautiful print from Joy of Print. And I like, it's just like a small print wallpaper that just brings texture and interest to a room. And then you can so easily kind of layer on artwork and prints. And I just think it's a lovely backdrop. And yeah, it's a sunny room. I love this. I think it's called Dayroom Yellow. I think this one might be and we put it on the ceiling and we put it on, we just, this was existing cupboard that was here that we just, yeah, I just wanted to be painted inside and out. I won't show you inside the cupboard. But we also did the same on the windows. So yeah, it feels like it's a sunshine room. It feels like it's just enveloped in colour. And yeah, again, still some, you know, walls to fill with artwork. But we have cats at home. So the David Shrigley print was a favourite. And it reminds us a little bit of our cats in a home. And yeah, again, vintage pieces that we found all in the mirror and the chest of drawers and then the bedside table. And actually I like this room because you can see out into the garden and you also feel connected to the space downstairs because you can see through the skylight into the kitchen. There were a couple of fireplaces left in the house. This one was here and the one in the other kid's bedroom. Again, they were all covered up. So and again, it was all painted and was in not a great condition. So we kind of uncovered it. It was one of the one of the first things we did when we got the house is we stripped up the carpets, which were awful. And we just got a hammer out and started trying to, you know, find out what was behind these kind of blocked up spaces. And yeah, this was one of the finds. This is one of the things we found. I like this view out here because I like the fact that you again, you see some of that exposed brick and you can see that the house extends beyond. And that was this is what we've added to the home. So and I like how the colours work and I like the kind of imperfect brick again with the modern art on top. So I'm quite late to interior design. Actually, I started my career in advertising. So I worked for 20 odd years in the advertising world and had an amazing time. And and I was client services. And I think that certainly helped from, you know, a design perspective in my second career. I then had kids and I took that opportunity to retrain. So I did a like a it was a part time course to kind of just learn the basics of interiors. I think I always I always had a passion for home and making home and, you know, making the space where I live lovely. That's important to me. So I feel as if I always wanted to do this. So, yeah, I retrained and then and then got some experience doing some internships and just got some practical experience kind of under my belt. And, you know, as soon as I had the opportunity, I, you know, branched out on my own. Moving to the back of the house. So again, we've had some more fun with wallpaper. I suppose I kind of feel as if this is a holiday home so we could have some joy with colour and pattern. So, you know, all of the bedrooms actually, apart from the front bedroom, have wallpaper. So this one is Lucky Leaf by Common Room. Again, another favourite wallpaper of mine. So I'm glad I had the chance to to kind of use it. And this is my son's bedroom. And again, we kind of carried on that theme of just sunshine and brightness. And just I think these colours just make me joyful. Again, we've added colour on the ceiling, perhaps, you know, again, a slightly unexpected touch, but I like just being surrounded in colour. And this was one of my favourite finds. It was almost like it was almost a steal. It's just this really sweet little vintage sideboard, vintage bedside table that I just think has a real kind of old fashioned charm about it. I think when you're designing, you're always trying to make sure that the rooms work together. You always try and, I think, look at it as a whole. You know, you want each individual room to have its own personality, but you also, I think, want to look at it as a house as a whole and just make sure that the colours work with each other, that the style of each room, you know, feels like they sit next to each other. So yeah, I always have a kind of view to the whole home when designing a space. I just particularly like this chest of drawers. It's, again, another vintage find, but I just like the, it's just slightly wonky. It's just slightly, it reminds me of my kind of, you know, childhood and my bedroom at home. And I like the kind of just the, it's just, it's just, I like the fact that it's just being used a lot and looks like it's been well loved. What I love about this home is that when you walk in, the downstairs space feels really open. It feels really spacious. And, you know, it doesn't feel like this kind of tiny little home. It actually feels like it opens out as you walk through it. And I love, I love just kind of sitting in this area and then kind of looking out and there's a glimpse into the kitchen. You can see, as you come in, you can almost see straight through into the garden. There are views in the downstairs and I like how those views, you know, interact. So this is now the new part of the home. So this is the extension going up into the loft. And the original plan was to have brick wall going all the way up. But when we, so when we bought the house, we couldn't see upstairs. We, there was this tiny, tiny, tiny little hatch into the loft that nobody went into. So the first time we were able to go into it was when we'd already done all the architect's plans that had already gone through planning. And, you know, it was only when the builder was here that we were able to get upstairs. And so it was, it became apparent that we couldn't use the original wall upstairs for various dull reasons. So we had to come up with another solution. And the way of doing it to, I think perhaps I quite like differentiating the old from the new. So we added panelling to the kind of new build section so that it, I didn't want it to feel like a, like a boxy space. I wanted it to feel like it was still warm and cosy and connected to the home. So I think that the allows it to feel, yeah, just, just warmer. And it's not like a standard developed loft. It just has a bit more character. So coming up the stairs, so we've kind of kept the colours the same as, as downstairs. So we're now, this is our, this is still Edward Bulmer. This is the And we built in loft space with a little hidden door. So this is the, the new loft bedroom. And yeah, we were amazed at the space we got up here. We weren't expecting it. And when the first time that our builder brought us up and kind of showed us this space. So we'd only seen it as we'd been like, you know, we'd been up on ladders and we'd And then the day that they brought us up and they'd opened out the kind of, the dormer space, we suddenly had this view that was like totally unexpected. You know, we're in Whitstable and, you know, you kind of, you might expect a sea view. So this home doesn't have a sea view, but it has a view over the golf course that was just, there was just like a total unexpected bonus. So yeah, so that's, and then we, we, we wanted to again, kind of embrace the fact that it was a modern extension. So we wanted to put in crittle steel windows that reflect the crittle doors of the kitchen extension. So that's kind of what we went with on the, on the kind of the dormer side. And I think our architect did an amazing job up here because it doesn't feel cramped. You've got like great kind of height. There's that kind of slightly sloping ceiling that I like that quirk. I like the fact that it's not, it's certainly not a square room. And we had long discussions about whether we, you know, we box that in or, and I felt quite strongly that I wanted to embrace the quirks of the room. So this is the chimney breast, the chimney stack from, you know, the, it must be the living room downstairs. So I wanted to expose beyond the chimney breast and actually just embrace the different shapes that sometimes, you know, loft extensions bring. We also wanted to kind of carve out space for an ensuite. And, you know, it's, it's tricky upstairs because you want to keep as much space for the kind of bed area as possible. But I'm really pleased that we were able to kind of make it, you know, space for a really large shower. So it doesn't feel pokey when you're in here. And we just had a little bit of fun with the floor tiles. And again, we carried on the horizontal panelling so that there was a little bit of a continuity with the panelling from the stair area. And just, it's also a way of just adding some character. It's not just flat walls. And then just trying to, you know, maximise the storage space as much as possible. This is under the eaves where we have built, this is in fact actually the only kind of built-in joinery, storage joinery we did. I think possibly when we, you know, move here full time, we might have to build some more storage space. But for now it's, you know, it's perfectly fine from a holiday perspective and, you know, us using it as a holiday home. I wanted to add some texture. So I found this raffia that we, you know, laid onto the backboard. Again, it's just that kind of mixing textures, not having it completely flat, just adding interest in different elements. I think we were lucky that we were able to go, we were able to go all the way across. So there's actually quite a lot of storage. It's not kind of full height for long dresses, but it is, you know, it's perfectly adequate for what we need and much more than we were expecting. And it just makes great use of what is ultimately not very usable space. And then I, again, I like the angles in the, in the ensuite. And then we, you know, we've added light. We added a skylight in the bathroom that lets the natural light in. And also going up the stairs in the stairwell, we added a skylight above there. So there's lots of natural light coming in from different aspects. I think what makes a house a home for me is family time, is having friends and family around, making memories, having space where you can share and spend time together and just enjoy each other's company. I like a home to be, you know, to be happy. I think that what we've tried to do here is, or what I certainly try with interiors is to, you know, talk to clients and find out what makes them happy. And then having all those things on display around you, having things that bring you joy out on display, rather than, you know, put in cupboards. I like kind of open spaces and open shelves and so that there's personality around you and things that bring you joy are around you. That's I think what, what for me makes a home. Thanks for watching. Be sure to go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content, shopping guides, and so much more.