15 minute read
American Retro
HOME TRUTHS
LOCATION: St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex
THE OWNERS: Vicky Wetherill and Jason Skriniar with their cats Glenda and Rita
THE PROPERTY: Victorian onebedroom apartment aving found the seafront
Hapartment full of original features they’d been looking for, Vicky Wetherill and Jason Skriniar set about bringing it back to life in their own inimitable style.
Impressed by the original 12-foot windows, ornate plasterwork and Victorian marble-effect columns, Vicky was able to see past the decor the previous owners had opted for. “The walls were a mixture of bright blue and a horrible pink. I’m all for crazy colour combinations, but it was a bit much even for me,” she laughed. “However, it didn’t worry me at all though as the flat was really impressive – we could have just painted the walls and moved in.”
The sofa is by French designer Louis Durot and Vicky is sitting on an old wooden fairground ride
Her relaxed attitude belies the fact that the kitchen consisted of “fallingapart chipboard and a few units slung on the wall” and the bathroom, “wasn’t really a bathroom, it was just a toilet, a washing machine and a prison-like shower.”
They started work on the kitchen as soon as they moved in and quickly moved on to the bathroom. “We just
ripped everything out, right back to the bare bones,” said Vicky. She had been collecting 1950s American freestanding kitchen units for a while, having bought one as stock for her shop and taken a shine to it. “It was all quite easy because you just plonk the units in and get a plumber to plumb them in,” she explained. “They’re just like furniture – it’s that easy to make a kitchen.”
The sofa came from Engelbert Humperdinck’s house via an online auction site. It was custom made for him. We just wanted a big comfortable sofa and afterwards the seller sent me photos of the sofa coming out of Engelbert’s house
Vicky Wetherill and Jason Skriniar stand on the balcony of their seafront apartment. They have to climb out of the window to access it
The units were made in the 1950s by a company called English Rose. Due to a shortage of wood and an excess of aluminium from damaged planes after the war, a lot of furniture was made from aluminium and painted cream to look like painted wood. Vicky and Jason have stripped theirs back to reveal the metal underneath.
Once the kitchen was complete, they moved on to the bathroom, and cleverly made the best of a small space by realising what would work for them. “We’re both bath people. We couldn’t work out how to fit both a bath and a shower into the space, so we just went for a bath,” Vicky explained. “You don’t need much headroom in the bath, so it seemed logical to tuck it under the stairs.”
They lived in the flat throughout the renovation work. “It was relatively easy because the main room is quite big, so we could shuffle
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The 20-foot painting of the lower half of a group of people is actually part of a 1950s theatre set depicting a day at the races which was bought at a local auction
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The columns between the sitting room and kitchen are original and are faux marble, they have the original Victorian paint effect and then gilded on the top All the items around the fireplace came from flea markets. “I bought our plastic bear at a Belgian flea market when I was sleep deprived having got up 2am to get there,” laughed Vicky
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our stuff around. It wasn’t too disruptive. There were a few days of not having anywhere to cook, or any water while things were being plumbed in, but we just borrowed friends’ water supplies and ate takeaway – it was a good excuse,” she smiled.
So far, so simple, but while they were working away inside, they discovered problems with the building itself. “The whole building from top to bottom needed work. The roof needed repairing, it needed damp proofing everywhere, it needed treatment for dry rot and wet rot, and there were rats running between the walls, which wasn’t nice,” laughed Vicky. The basement flat directly below Vicky and Jason had been derelict for many years and was the source of a lot of the problems. Vicky and Jason spent two years undertaking work on external and communal areas, sharing the costs with their neighbours. The work included damp
The 1950s Tolix table was sourced from a flea market and the daffodil lamp was bought online
The chairs are 1950s American and the table was made by an American company called Lane in the 1960s
I like the weirder end of 1950s and 1960s design, that’s why I like American interiors
PREPARATION “Prepare woodwork carefully before painting it. You know what I mean – the boring bits, sanding stuff down! I’m not the most patient person when it comes to painting, so some of our things are painted but not very well.”
CHOOSING COLOURS “I found it really helpful to get a test pot of any paint colours we were considering, paint a really big piece of paper and pin it up on the wall. Then we could see how the colour looked at different times of day, in different parts of the room and under different lighting conditions before making a commitment.”
IDEAS & INSPIRATION “Go to reclamation yards and look for bathroom fittings, baths, sinks or even quirky and unique decorative items. They can be intimidating places but don’t be put off - they’re just another type of shop full of amazing things.”
FURNITURE & FINISHINGS “Don’t be worried about mixing up different types of furniture and interior styles. What’s the worst that can happen? No one is going to die. If you worry too much about what people think, you will end up with a really, really boring house.”
proofing, rat extermination and the replacement of their external balcony, which had all but crumbled away.
They then spent three years enjoying the flat before deciding to undertake just one more project. “When we realised we were going to be here for a bit longer, we decided to make the bedroom into a room that we really wanted to sleep in. We thought, ‘What the hell? We’ll just knock two bedrooms into one and enjoy it.’ We used the second bedroom as an office, but more often than not ended up working in the living room anyway.”
Vicky and Jason hired local builders to knock down the wall between the two bedrooms and close up the two doorways by creating one new one. “We had previously laid parquet flooring from a reclamation yard in the two
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The print is a Belgian 1950s anatomy chart of an emu. The sign above the door reads “We Do Miss You” and was bought from an antiques centre. Vicky thinks it was a leaving present for a pub landlord and probably dates from the 1900s. It is one of her favourite things in the flat The kitchen units are all freestanding. They are made of aluminium with a steel worktop and sink. Originally, they were painted cream to mimic wood but Vicky and Jason stripped them down and polished them up
• Resin Bound & Bonded • Hot Bitumen & Gravel • Dropped kerbs and crossovers • Block paving • Groundworks • Tarmacadam
An old shop fitting, spotted at a flea market, has been repurposed as a storage unit for clothes
bedrooms, so when the wall came down, there was a gap down the middle. We just patched it up using more reclaimed parquet. You can totally see where the wall was. It’s not a great job, but that’s what happens when we do things ourselves. It is now covered up with a rug,” laughed Vicky. “And I found the pub door on eBay. It already had ‘private’ written on it, which I quite liked.”
Alongside the original features and the structural improvements that Vicky and Jason have made, it’s their distinctive sense of style that sets this seafront flat apart. “I can’t make mood boards and plan a scheme, I wish I could. I do envy people who can do that,” admitted Vicky. “We would just have half an eye on something in the
There were a few days of not having anywhere to cook, or any water while things were being plumbed in
shop and bring it up here to see what it looked like. There are things I regret selling because they would have been perfect. Other stuff we bought when we were away on buying trips for the shop. It’s very easy buying for yourselves – a little bit too easy sometimes.”
Shopping for furniture for herself, rather than for the shop, was one of things Vicky enjoyed most about the project. “I buy things because I like them, whether they’re for the shop or for the flat, but buying for ourselves did feel a bit more free. I could think, ‘Well I like it, and it doesn’t matter if no-one else likes it, because it’s just for us.’ I like the weirder end of 1950s and 1960s design, that’s why I like American interiors – there are some really bizarre things. It’s not the same as the safer design of 1950s England.”
“I know our style isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I’d rather be laughed at than bore people,” Vicky laughed. l Text by: Katie Treggiden Styling by: Sally Maton Photography: GAP Interiors/Bruce Hemming
The wardrobe is made of aluminium, like the ones in the kitchen. The laundry basket is pre-1950s French, another flea market find, and the chair is a very early Eames chair
