A couple added £1.65million to the value of a house by converting it from a squalid network of seven bedsits into a stunning five-bedroom family home with a huge, sunlit living room and a wine cellar on the ground floor. Chelsea Dixon and her husband Robert Bühler, 33 and 31, bought the crumbling Victorian terrace house in Shepherd's Bush, West London, for £1.6million at an October 2015 auction just three days after the birth of their son, Forest.
The rubbish-strewn property had not been renovated in up to 30 years, had damp, and housed a drug den on the top floor. But Dixon saw the potential of the property's high 8.2-feet ceilings and its enviable location on a leafy street.
The rubbish-strewn property had not been renovated in up to 30 years, had damp, and housed a drug den on the top floor. But Dixon saw the potential of the property's high 8.2-feet ceilings and its enviable location on a leafy street.
The end result is estimated to be worth £3.5million after £600,000 worth of building work and feels very far away from the house Dixon first came across in an auction catalogue she was reading in hospital.'I was looking at properties while waiting to give birth in the hospital when I saw it. I knew that street very well and knew properties never come upon it. 'The baby was about three days old on the day of the auction. I wasn't planning on buying it but put an offer down and we weren't outbid.'
The couple, who own the home and design company Vada Collective, quickly got to work clearing out years worth of rubbish before knocking down every interior wall and stripping the plaster down to the bare brickwork. 'There were lots of people living there before,' Dixon said. 'It was hideous one of the upstairs rooms was a crack den and there were drugs all over the floor. Two ladies on the ground floor were fairly tidy in comparison.' We had to clear all the junk that had been left so we could see the wood from the trees. Then we stripped it back to the bare walls and plasterboard, and removed some old lime plaster that was falling from the ceiling.' We are now living happily ever after.
