We headed over to Upminster in East London to visit Eleni and Olive, to get a tour of their gorgeous family home. Head to our YouTube channel for their episode of Resi Renos, where Eleni breaks down how she became a DIY queen, where she got her inspiration from, how she tackled a project of this size and what her budget was vs how much she spent. Coming soon...

What sparked this project?

So I've been here coming up to three years now. I found the house because I wanted a renovation project and was already living in the area, and I was really lucky to find a house pretty much straight away that ticked all of my boxes. I got really into the world of renovation, and was following a lot of reno / DIY accounts on Instagram, so I decided that it was the right time to purchase a house that I could put my own spin on, because I wanted to do a lot of it myself. And the timing worked out really well as it was during Covid, so I took advantage of the stamp duty freeze and just thought, why not?!

How did you come across Resi, and what made you choose us as your partner for the project?

I found Resi on Google. I had no idea what I was doing, I'd never done a renovation before, so I remember just googling how to get started and architects etc, Resi came up and I liked the idea of the full service, that I would be able to get support and advice at every stage of my project from the initial scoping out right through to the build. I did talk to a few other independent architects and surveyors and but again, I only really found that Resi gave you the full support. And I just felt that I would prefer to have that, given that it was all a complete unknown.

What was the timeline of the project?

I moved in in April 2021, and after I had the initial call with my Resi designer Oli to talk about what I wanted, it all moved quite quickly. We didn't have to do a lot of back and forth, Oli gave me a few options that we talked through and there were just a few tweaks that we made together. So it was really smooth and really exciting to see the project start to come to life, and just visualise the space that I was going to have.

It would have been the June or July of that same year that we started with the build. It was just me at the time, my daughter hadn't been born yet, so I didn't have a little energetic ten month old running around! During the build I made a makeshift kitchen in the living room, as the kitchen got ripped out at the very start. Luckily I was pregnant quite quickly after and just wanted to eat toast for about six months, so that wasn't a big deal!

The build took probably about six months and finished late in 2021. And then it was just the fun job of decorating and furnishing. It was all hands on deck to get everything clean and decorated, there's still lots of snagging bits to do which have just been on the to-do list forever. But I wanted to make sure that the space was clean and safe for when Olive arrived.

What was the house like before, what were the pain points? How did it all change, and what do you love most about the house now?

So there was previously a small conservatory at the back of the house which led on to a small dining room space. And then the kitchen, which was really tiny, so when we did the design, it was the perfect space to turn into the utility room. Where the extension is was just the patio, so we were able to take some of that away and build onto that without losing really anything of the main patio in the garden.

The biggest pain point of the house before was the really small kitchen - you could just about fit one person in there at a time! And the way the conservatory and dining room was set out, it didn't really give you that big open plan social space - and that's what I really wanted to create. I wanted a kitchen that was open and accessible. The conservatory was boiling when the sun was shining and freezing when the sun wasn't shining, so it wasn't really a space that you could comfortably use and live in. I was pregnant and so I was focusing on getting the nursery ready and getting all the bits together for her, but then thinking about how it was configured before, there wouldn't have been much space for Olive to crawl around in and just have everything that she needs to be able to explore.

I always wanted bifold doors to open up into the garden. And one of my favourite features of the house is the picture window, just being able to be in the kitchen and see out into the garden, to see her if she's playing out there, or just be able to stare out and see the outside. Because the conservatory was here before, you couldn't get a nice view of the garden.

In the utility room, we were also able to put a downstairs toilet and a shower room in as well. The house only had one family bathroom upstairs, so I thought for longevity and to make the house a little bit more sellable in the future, it would be worth putting in a second bathroom and shower.

Having not done this before, having the support from Resi at hand was just amazingly helpful. I'd feel better prepared if I went into it a second time, I think, and did another project. And I did really enjoy it! But I think this is everything that we need now. Home for me is somewhere warm and safe that you can feel relaxed and at ease as a family. There are good schools and good nurseries around, so I think we've got everything we need.

Photography by Peter Furlong.