A year elapsed between the first time Irenie Cossey viewed a beautiful but derelict Neo-Jacobean townhouse on the corner of London\u2019s De Beauvoir Square and chose to walk away, and the second time she viewed it, when she bought it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was completely wrecked,\u201d Cossey said, but \u201cI fell in love with the shadows.\u201d<\/p>\n
With over 20 years of experience working in architecture and interior design, the founder of interiors firm Irenie Studio perhaps had more capacity to see the potential in the rundown house than an average home buyer, but renovating the four-story, Grade II-listed property was still a daunting task.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MORE: <\/strong>Nebraska\u2019s Most Expensive Listing, With a Speakeasy and Putting Green, Hits the Market for $8.125M<\/a><\/p>\n Cossey purchased it in July 2023, when it had been standing empty for at least three and a half years.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe roof was in complete decay, so much so that the neighbor\u2019s was also leaking,\u201d she said. \u201cThere was no running water, and there was one socket, but it was deemed dangerous to use.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n After installing a temporary water supply and a single working electrical outlet, she began the process of getting to know the house, trying to determine which elements of its character to preserve and enhance.<\/p>\n \u201cIt had really good bones,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was in the same ownership since the \u201970s [so] the curtains were still there, the marble floor, the mirror, bits and bobs. I could see there were some period features that had remained in a good state, but the house was basically dead. It needed to be revived.\u201d<\/p>\n Her first major reference point for the redesign of the three-bedroom, three-bathroom house, which is currently on sale with Knight Frank for \u00a33 million (US$3.9 million), was the original oriel windows, dating from the house\u2019s construction in 1840.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were 10 windows at the time, and every single window had some form of triangle or diamond shape within it, and they\u2019re all different heights, widths, etcetera,\u201d she says. \u201cSo the whole magic was through the looking glass.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n MORE:<\/strong>\u00a0Longtime Country House of TV Star Bob Monkhouse on Sale in Bedfordshire, England<\/a><\/p>\n The beauty of these mismatched windows gave Cossey the theme of her restoration, which she based on British author\u00a0Lewis Carroll\u2019s 200-year-old novels \u201cAlice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland\u201d and \u201cThrough the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.\u201d<\/p>\n In keeping with the aesthetic and atmosphere of these surreal stories, Cossey set out to play with pattern and scale, creating a sense of wonder, whimsy and surprise. Original tiles from around the house were carefully removed, repurposed and remixed with modern additions, allowing the designer to create patterns that play with \u201cscale, threshold and illusion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI thought of the project in two chapters,\u201d she said. \u201cSo from the ground up was about enhancing what we had and revealing what was there, and from the lower ground you were going down the rabbit hole, and that\u2019s where you\u2019ve got all the different tile patterns, and it\u2019s a little bit of a different feel to the period features of the three floors above.\u201d<\/p>\n The most dramatic changes centered on finding ways to bring the house\u2019s 1840s character into the 2020s.\u00a0<\/p>\n