Surrey Homes | SH50 | December 2018 | Health & Beauty supplement inside

Above: Looking from the kitchen back to the living area. The
slate grey walls have been created using a material imported
from America, called Ardex Left: The log stores were designed
and made by Matt
Wells, where they work, that brought them to Camber.
“I grew up around here and came down to the beach in
summer and winter – all year,” says Gigi. “We were looking
in Devon and Cornwall when this house came up.”
A mid-century box of a house backing onto the iconic
sand dunes, the property hadn’t been touched in years,
something that might have put others off, but not Gigi
and Matt. With their design backgrounds – Gigi is a
fashion stylist and Matt has a creative digital agency
– they could see beyond the faded decor and clutter
to the basic rectangle of the building. They set about
clearing some space and paring it back to a shell.
“We completely knocked it through,” Gigi explains.
“What is now the bathroom was the kitchen and
it was all really cluttered with small rooms. There
was a garage in two parts, so we opened it all up
and put French doors in all the way along.”
They worked every weekend, barely stopping for the birth
of their daughter Luna, because, as in all the best DIY house
projects, the baby arrived just at the messiest part of it.
The process has taken two years of weekends,
travelling to and from Tunbridge Wells and has been
a complete (and almost literal) labour of love.
surrey-homes.co.uk
42