Victorian House, Surrey

Victorian Home in Surrey undergoes complete renovation with Architectural and interior design studio Christopher David Designs.

Turning this traditional Victorian property into a light and airy home was going to be a big project, but with an extensive amount of experience in Architecture and Design, Christopher Birt from Christopher David Designs was more than ready to get to work on creating a dream home for his clients.

“Christopher David Designs is an Architectural and interior design studio based in Surrey and West London; Focusing on bespoke details and designs, the team primarily work on residential projects ranging from largescale manor houses located across the beautiful Surrey Countryside to smaller basement apartment projects in flats across London.”

Working on a whole range of projects with different scales and styles, Christopher and the team have built a fantastic portfolio. As a relatively new company they have been going for the past 2 years nearly but have completed over 60 projects in their first year, growing at a very fast pace ever since. With clean and elegant designs working in conjunction with functional spaces across all styles of projects, they were the perfect team to turn this Victorian Townhouse into a bright and airy home for the young family. Christopher goes on to explain the project brief:

“This current project was a Victorian townhouse that was across three levels, with the original kitchen being very dark with very few windows. The main design brief was to create something much lighter and to open out the kitchen completely to get some more light in the back end of the house creating a bright and airy design. The back part of the room didn’t get much light, previously it had a lowered ceiling and the back part of the kitchen – which is now a doorway – was an outdoor toilet – as many Victorian properties were in that era. We broke through the roof, bolting the ceiling and opening it up. We installed 5 roof lights which completely transformed the space and used a nice light and airy pallet, including V4’s lovely flooring that has great depth and texture to it.”

When it came to finding the perfect floor, Christopher and the team found V4 Wood Flooring from a google search, and before long came to visit our Surrey Design Centre where they found the perfect wood floor for this project:

“I found you on Google, but we came to visit the V4 Surrey Design Centre. The large-scale samples on the walls and floors were very helpful to see. We visited with the clients, and since then we have recommended you to many of our clients to see the flooring and they’ve been really impressed. The visit was really welcoming and helpful – we are glad that we went and visited! You need to see large-scale samples with wood to see the variation in the tones, it is important.”

For this project, Christopher chose Natural Smoked, from our European Boutique Empires collection. This fantastic, engineered oak wood floor is given a deep brushing to create a tactile surface, enhancing the grain before being smoked to create the warm and inviting colour you can see in this installation. Not to mention, Natural Smoked is also PEFC certified, meaning that the timber used for this floor was responsibly sourced. One of the reasons that this floor was chosen for this project is because it would be located in high-traffic areas, meaning Christopher and his team wanted a floor that would be robust. Unique to this European Boutique Collection, the Empires range is complete with a deep brushing which provides a textured and hardwearing surface.

What’s more, this detail also offers a rustic finish that perfectly fits in with the blending of old Victorian elements, and the modern style that this design achieves, As Christopher explains:

“We chose that floor because we felt it matched well with the property, it has a lot of texture and character to it. It is a lovely Victorian property and we wanted to bring some of that character inside, which we achieved through the use of wood. We were always going to have timber, but wanted something that had texture and character, it has the character, offering a contemporary feel whilst maintaining the character with the knots, grains and texture from the deep brushing that suited the Victorian property. The overall style is a blend between contemporary and traditional, we have kept a lot of the traditional elements from the original property, such as the traditional cornices and ceiling roses, we reused and upcycled the old doors that had been in the projects for over 100 years, the lighten fixtures we rubbed down and sprayed with a matt black paint to give a contrast between the wall colours. keeping the traditional elements and design features but giving a contemporary feel.”

One of the biggest changes to the property was the renovation at the back of the kitchen. Christopher explains the end result once the roof had been lifted and more windows installed: The kitchen looked and felt so much bigger once the renovation was complete. It was great to be able to see right through to the garden from the second you walked in, with all the lovely plants in the garden, it made the home very welcoming.

The client was also a great fan of the flooring, Christopher explains staying that she really likes the finished product of the flooring, it is of high quality and just ages so well
 and with all the footfall, the look has gotten even better. You can follow Christopher and his team here as they continue to work on fantastic products, including some lovely landscape projects and manor estates in Surrey and a Japanese garden project, right through to a new build traditional Georgian property, and secret log cabins in the Wentworth Estate.

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