6 Fantastically Renovated Victorian Homes | Architectural Digest

In 2012, London antiques vendor Will Fisher was driving round Spitalfields within the East Finish of London when he spied a tragic, dejected constructing with a “For Sale” signal outdoors. Heartbroken by a earlier sale of an 18th-century Huguenot home within the space falling by in his twenties, he grabbed this as his second. Though it’s his second London residence—and incongruous in some ways—typically, with a home purchase, there’s a increased actual property energy happening.

Happiest when immersed in a challenge, Fisher—proprietor of the Pimlico residence furnishings store—was in search of a fixer-upper that he may breathe new life into. “I wanted to discharge some pent-up need to renovate a home,” he says with a smile, explaining that each nook in his present residence was adorned to the nth diploma.

And there was a lot work to be performed. Constructed on the flip of the twentieth century, the Victorian/Edwardian–period former wigmaker’s residence was in a critical state of disrepair. “There’s nothing like seeing a spare constructing with nothing in it for the primary time. You understand what a Herculean process lies forward. Additionally, why you had been the client and no one else,” Fisher says. Thrilling versus terror-stricken? “It’s a loopy frisson of each.” —Claire Bingham

Millwork Makes Essential Stage 

Structurally magnificent with superb proportions, this 1879-built home has all of the commanding traits of the Victorian interval, however there’s one thing completely different happening right here. Any trace of the period’s stuffiness is countered with streamlined up to date design, and the non-public rooms upstairs really feel comfortable and intimate in distinction to the open areas on the bottom flooring.

Taking up the renovation of this home in St. Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex, inside designer Scarlett Gowing had fairly the problem. The near-derelict Grade II—listed property has endured many incarnations through the years (it has been a convalescent residence, language faculty, and drug rehabilitation heart) and within the course of misplaced any semblance of the household residence it as soon as was. Additionally, the spook issue was excessive. “It was a giant ask,” says Gowing of how she tackled the renovation. “The home had misplaced its soul: All of the stained glass was damaged and boarded over and loads of the doorways had been bricked as much as create smaller rooms.” So she went again to the unique flooring plan to deliver the home again to life. —Claire Bingham