PROJECT OF THE MONTH: A TOUCH OF HISTORY
By One Home Interiors

At One Home Interiors, we love staging properties and helping our clients to get their houses ready for the market. We especially love to stage properties with interesting history behind them. We are lucky to have come across a number of unique properties in St Albans, a beautiful city rich in both industrial and Roman history.

Straw-hat Industry Victorian Cottage

This lovely Victorian terraced property is located where many of the straw-hat factories used to be. The tightly-knit streets of terraced houses were mostly factory workers’ cottages. Walking around the area today, remnants of its hat making industrial past is still very much evident, with The Old Hat Factory and Milliner’s Court standing out proudly as modern residential conversions just around the corner.

This property is a traditional two-up two-down end of terrace. After a thoughtful and sympathetic renovation, the house was listed for sale but attracted little interests. The main feedbacks were that it lacked a dining space, and the small box room upstairs couldn’t possibly fit in a single bed.

By repositioning the sofa, we zoned in the lounge area, and created a cosy dining area without blocking access into the kitchen. We furnished the single bedroom to make it a functional room, running with the industrial theme throughout the property.

Old Dairy Farm Conversion

This locally listed property is a unique black and white, charming one-bedroom terraced house converted from an old dairy farm. This part of the house was added in the 1920s in an Art Deco style and design. Before the conversion, it was used as offices where customers would come to pay for their milk deliveries.

The property was tenanted for a number of years. It has an open-plan living and dining space. After the last tenants moved out, it was re-listed for let completely unfurnished. Potential tenants who viewed the property struggled to visualise where they could place a dining table in addition to a sofa in the small open-plan living room.

We created a dining area using a statement mirror as a focal point. We then used a rug to zone out the lounge space and added a splash of colour using throw cushions. The property was let immediately after staging.

Victorian Hospital conversion

This property, located besides the existing St Albans City Hospital, was an old hospital itself in Victorian times. It was used to segregate patients with contagious diseases from the main hospital. The advancement of antibiotics in the 1950s reduced the number of such patients significantly. It was later used as doctors’ offices before being converted into residential units.

The property has a gallery level and beautiful double height sash windows obscured by heavy blackout curtains. The property suffered from extensive wear and tear. The owner also had large number of oversized and mismatched pieces of furniture in the lounge and dining room.

We replaced the heavy curtains with white shutters, letting in the much-needed light. The chunky furniture was replaced with on-trend leather sofa, accent chair and stools, and styled for the young professional buyer’s market.

To learn more about One Home Interiors and their beautiful projects around St Albans and area, please visit their website www.onehomeinteriors.co.uk