Inspiration - Helen’s houseof.
It is time you got to know the founders behind houseof. We founded houseof because it was something we wanted - as housewares customers. Have a read to see where Helen started renovation journey in her houseof.
We don’t just think of ourselves as the founders of houseof, myself and Michael like to think we are the epitome of the houseof customer. Not just because we love the brand (biased much?!) but we both live in project houses - like a lot of our customers. We are at slightly different stages and whilst Michael is still building foundations and knocking his house about, I am nicely in the decorating phase of the build.
We aren’t fortunate enough to live in a house, Craig (my husband), Pippin (our dog) and I live in a 2 bed flat in North London. We love our flat now but we bought a wreck and lived in it for about 6 months before we scraped enough together to start the renovations. Everything needed doing, heating, electrics and new plumbing. We put in a new kitchen, windows, lighting and switches and basically, anything which wasn’t structurally integral to the flat was taken to the skip.
Here are our before photos. I love the fact we took these, it shows us how far we have come and even though we still have a list longer than our arms of things that need doing we now have a house we love.
It took a while to get started but soon we had ripped the Swedish sauna wooden cladding off the walls and wallpaper from the….ceiling (yep ceiling!) ready for the builders to descend. We now had a shell flat. We moved all of our stuff into one room and had a very convenient kitchen/bedroom/living room for the next 3 months. Cosy.
When I look back to these times I am obviously looking back with rose-tinted glasses as I proclaim “it wasn’t THAT bad” but I don’t know how I got through these months and still remember the feeling of having new carpet under my toes and being able to take my shoes off indoors for the first time. Simple pleasures.
Whether you are in the middle of the build or starting one soon, don’t worry it is all worth it. Coming out the other side and having our flat exactly as we want it is pretty special. All of our plugs and light switches are in just the right spots, the kitchen is a dream space with my dream oven and we are finally able to have guests to stay - in a proper bed!
Good luck in your build and we would love to see how you are progressing. Just tag houseof on social. Stay tuned to see more from me soon and show you how we are getting on in our flat.
