It’s been over twenty years since their double-fronted Victorian house in Ealing last saw a renovation and a lot has changed for Wendy and Andy Buckroyd.
Now retired and with three grown-up daughters, the former IT professionals needed a space to bring the family together and celebrate the details of daily life. Wendy Buckroyd tells the story of how they worked with PAD to make it happen.
We’ve lived in this house since 2001 and in Ealing for longer than that, so we felt it was time to change the layout and really update the house to make it more sociable. We wanted something that was a bit impactful and impressive - a large, open space for living and entertaining, and some separate spaces making use of the rooms at the front for music and media. A lot of the time our socialising revolves around food so having the big kitchen opening up onto the dining area, a casual seating area and a terrace with garden furniture works really well. It enables us to spend more time together in a loose way.
One thing PAD did early on was help us think about a whole colour palette before we started getting to the fine details of the design. There were times we were worried we were just building this big cube that would feel quite hard, but because of the colours it feels very soft and welcoming. It’s a north-facing aspect, so we can have big windows without ever getting too hot. It’s beautiful because it gets a lot of natural daylight, but it’s also very calm.
We’d had conversations about using interesting materials, one of which is this significant corrugated concrete element that is both inside and outside the house. We love the toughness and robust- ness that it brings. It’s a very industrial material, but it’s got a wave that looks quite refined as well. The grainy finish has a very slight sparkle in it, which sounds a bit bling. It isn’t really, it’s just very tactile.
And then there’s the green roof. You’ve got quite a harsh concrete extension to the house but then all these grasses and flowers coming over the top which look absolutely great. It’s a measure of the trust that we have in PAD that they knew what we wanted and made some of those little decisions behind the scenes while also taking us along on the journey.
A lot of the time our socialising revolves around food so having the big kitchen opening up onto the dining area, a casual seating area and a terrace with garden furniture works really well. It enables us to spend more time together in a loose way.
In particular, Emil gave us a sofa idea, which initially we thought looked bizarre, but some- times you have to trust Paul Archer Design! It is a very organic sofa which faces in a number of directions and works beautifully in that space. You can watch TV, you can look into the garden, you can talk to people who are in the kitchen. And when we have groups of people over, it’s amazing how it gets used in different ways.
We are planning a big Christmas. We’ve got family coming and it’s going to be the perfect Christmas room, but really we use the space for celebrating all the time because we’re very able to be together. The amount of time that we spend in that room now shows how successful it’s been. You don’t necessarily need an occasion to be in there. It’s for celebrating everyday life.
