Property
Profile Property The perfect family home
Martyn Steele turned two dated flats back into one stunning six-bedroom family home - with a lot of help from his sister Michele and dad Bob. Profile Property Writer Sarah Crabtree paid them a visit.
Factfile
The property: Elegant Victorian detached house in leafy Broomhall Park, Sheffield.
Bedrooms: six doubles
Bathrooms: four
Moved in: 2006
Amount spent on build: £120,000
Now worth: £750,000
Who lives here: Martyn Steele, a solicitor, aged 33. He restored his home with dad Bob Steele, 62, a university lecturer, and sister Michele Nott, 34, a teacher.
MARTYN Steele’s six-bedroom detached may be the perfect family home - but it never could have turned out that way if it wasn’t for the help of his own family.
He and dad Bob invested together in the renovations, mucked in on the decorating and DIY, and got stuck in together with the back-breaking work turning the overgrown jungle at the back into a beautifully landscaped garden.
And it was sister Michele’s eye for stylish interiors which brought a contemporary elegance to the colour schemes, furnishings, bathrooms and kitchen.
Three years ago Birch House - named after the pretty silver birch trees growing in the front garden - was an imposing but dated 1860s residence which had been split into two flats sometime around the 1950s.
Martyn lived in the two-bed flat downstairs, and dreamed of buying the one upstairs and restoring the whole house to its former glory.
“Sitting in my living room - with its amazing ceiling rose and ornate coving, 13ft high ceilings, deep skirting boards, original etched glass side window, and a beautiful bay with its original shutters - I could imagine what the rest of the house could look like,” he says.
“I had always wanted to move to this area, but as soon as I moved in I realised what a great house it could be rather than flats, and started thinking about turning it back in to one.”
A year on, when the old lady who had lived upstairs for 60 years sadly passed away, Martyn approached her family to ask if he might be given first refusal should the flat upstairs be sold.
“Fortunately her relatives liked the idea of the flats being converted back into a house,” remembers Martyn. “So we arranged the sale privately and the flat upstairs never went on the open market. I was very lucky.”
Once in possession of the entire property, Martyn was able to put his vision for the house into action.
“I had renovated the living room already, and put in a chandelier and a new stone fireplace from Stoke Hall Quarry. So we just literally sealed that room up, and the builders moved in.”
Both flats had been dark with twee decor and a rabbit warren of little rooms and long gloomy corridors - and much of the work involved ripping out the dividing walls which carved the house up.
What is now the light and spacious kitchen had been split into a galley kitchen and bathroom, and what is now the dining room had been Martyn’s bedroom. Upstairs a kitchen became a third bedroom, a bedroom became an en suite, and the main bedroom was created from a living room. The poky servants' staircase became a new boiler room.
But the most amazing transformation was upstairs in the attic - where Martyn discovered an entirely new room on the opposite side of the house to the uninsulated, unheated servants’ quarters. Now a stunning studio space, the previously undeveloped room hidden behind a brick wall has Velux windows letting light pour in for the first time in nearly a century-and-a-half.
Martyn lived at his mum’s nearby while the builders ripped out the flats’ two entrances, tore down the porch, knocked French doors from the kitchen to the garden, and demolished the ugly red brick steps which had been tacked onto the back of the house as rear access for the upstairs flat.
Inside the grand staircase in the hall was restored, and a new continuation added from the first floor to the second - the original access had been a tiny set of stairs inside a cupboard, which the servants would have used to scurry up to their quarters at night.
“We did get an architect to do the technical plans for the builders, and because reverting the flats to one house constituted change of use we had to go through full building regs,” says Bob. “But otherwise we did all the design ourselves.”
Once the builders moved out, Martyn’s sister Michele stepped in to help choose bathrooms, the kitchen, and the colour schemes.
She says: “We wanted to keep all the original features and take the house back to its former glory, but at the same time introduce a modern look with clean unfussy lines. We wanted to create a comfortable, contemporary, functioning family home.”
In the kitchen they achieved that with high gloss white units, worktops edged with stainless steel, and snazzy additions like spotlights which turn on and off at the wave of a hand. A roll-open shutter-style cupboard conceals the kettle and toaster and a utility cupboard keeps the washing machine hidden out of view.
In the dining room, in the cosy downstairs snug, and in the bedrooms upstairs Michele used patterned wallpapers, Farrow & Ball colours, painted antique furniture and homemade soft furnishings to make the house stylish and personal.
“Because of the sheer size of the house I was really able to play with scale, and get away with patterns that absolutely wouldn't work in an average sized house,” says Michele. “And I was probably braver here than I would be in my own house, which has been quite freeing!”
Now the house is complete, the talented trio are fiercely proud of their achievements as a family.
Bob says: “I am most proud of the fact we got it back to one house again rather than just living in it and leaving it as two flats. I really feel we have achieved something good.”
Martyn agrees: “I’m really pleased with the way it has all worked out. We took a rundown property which was split into two flats and turned it back into something beautiful.
“I'd definitely accept my family’s help on a future house - I wouldn't dare do it without them!”
• Birch House, 13 Victoria Road, Broomhall, is on sale with estate agents Saxton Mee. Call 0114 268 3241.
Home Truths
Martyn, what do you love most about living here?
“Ecclesall Road is just down the road, Broomhill is a ten-minute walk up the hill, you can be in the Botanical Gardens in five minutes, and living in this house is like living in the middle of a park, surrounded by trees and green space. You wouldn't know you're right in the middle of town at all, just five minutes from the city centre.”
What’s your favourite room?
”I really like the living room, and I love the garden. In summer it’s amazing. We have had some lovely family times in this house - at grandma's 90th birthday party the kids were able to run about and explore and climb the trees.
What did you learn from the renovation process?
“None of us had ever done anything like this before, so we all learned a lot - about scale, about how much time it takes to plan something like this, and about what you’re capable of doing yourself. As a family we all came from very different angles and had to learn to trust each other - a bit of a leap of faith sometimes - and we each took convincing on certain things, but it's worked.”
Address Book
• The coving in the hall was restored by Troika Architectural Mouldings of Herries Road - 0114 275 3222
• The new window frames and woodwork were made by Frame-Ups of Hillsborough - 0114 234 9993
• The wallpapers and paints were supplied by Lowes of Abbeydale Road - 0114 255 3746
• The Leicht kitchen units, appliances, taps and glass splashback all came from The John S Longley Studio and Showroom, Park Road, Barnsley - 01226 248 766 - www.jslongley.co.uk
• All the radiators and door handles came from Viking Reclamation in Armthorpe, Doncaster - www.reclaimed.co.uk / 01302 835 449
