“We said, ‘Show us the houses that no one else is really looking at,’” explains Joanna Plant of her search for a home for her young family. “I didn’t really know what the motivation for that was particularly, but I guess we just wanted something that wasn’t the obvious choice.” In 2001, that choice meant a semi-detached 1929 house in Acton, decked out in abominable 1970s décor and boasting a terrifying rockery in the garden. It was, by all accounts, something of an ugly duckling – and yet interior designer Joanna and her husband Nick, who designs and sources furniture and antiques, saw potential in it.
“That style of house, certainly at that time, had not the greatest associations. And I think it’s interesting, because what they have is slightly better spaces for quite a modest house. The hallways are often more generous than very narrow Victorian or Edwardian terraces.” Despite a narrow façade facing onto a quiet, leafy suburban road, the house extends backwards and outwards along a triangular plot, meaning the garden at the back is very wide. Coming from “a tiny-weeny little cottage” with an outdoor courtyard that was “two strides wide”, the couple knew that they’d found the ideal house for two sons who were dying for more garden space. “When walked through to the back, and it had that huge garden, it was a done deal. That was it.”
The garden more than outweighed the 1970s deep-pile pink carpet (“It was so grim,” says Joanna), the electric fires in every room, the brown-and-orange tiles and the tatty linoleum (“A 1970s sitcom kind of aesthetic,” she adds. “All a bit grisly”). The house was given a gradual facelift, the rockery at the back of the house hidden under a shady deck and Joanna’s subtle touch gradually updating and modernising it. “It’s evolved a lot,” she explains, “but it’s been very, very slow, and there was never a plan. I think for that reason, it doesn’t feel decorated, which I find I like at home. I don’t really want to live in an overly coordinated, thought-through [home].”
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