Surrey Homes | SH79 | August 2021 | Adding value to your property supplement inside

Above: With seating gathered around a glass-topped coffee table by Paolo Piva, Italy, the bright, spacious sitting room is furnished with an
intriguing segmented sectional 1970s Pantonova Sofa by Verner Panton for Fritz Hansen – upholstered in lipstick red – and a sleek day bed
in wood and ecru linen, made by John Alfredo
Enlivening the wall on the other side of the
hallway is a collection of 1970s Czech film posters,
which Beatrice found at a Paris auction house.
So there you have it already, in that first small
area, the dual specialities coming together to
create a space that works efficiently to live in –
and looks beautiful while you are doing it.
You are also immediately immersed in the very
specific atmosphere of the home, which feels calm
and relaxed – the result of quiet confidence, rather
than angsty striving. There is no try hard here.
But while it may feel coolly nonchalant, it did take effort
to achieve, as Beatrice remembers: “We have just sold it
because we want more space, a whole house, but it was a
wrench to let it go, because we did a lot to it. There was
a lot of work – electrics, plumbing, knocking through.”
Yet despite all the work they did here, she admits
there’s another factor she’s looking forward to with a
new place: “We want to tackle another project.”
This apartment is the two lower floors of a Victorian terrace
in one of the many streets in St Leonards-on-Sea which are
currently awakening from decades of being very run down.
In this one the integral elegance of the buildings
is starting to shine out again as the delights of living
within walking distance of the beach and myriad cool
places to eat, drink and shop, come to the fore.
Beatrice says the area has improved hugely in the
four years they’ve lived there, of the seven they’ve been
in Hastings, which is good to know, because their
route to the increasingly fashionable seaside town was
more random than the usual ‘I went there as a child…’
or ‘we visited friends there…’ explanations.
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