> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://haven.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Home tour: a 1920s terrace in Bristol - URL: https://haven.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/home-tour-a-1920s-terrace-in-bristol/ - Published: 2026-09-25T09:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-25T09:00:00.000Z - Description: Original floors, a kitchen in a new room and a garden dug out of rubble, one room a year. - Author: Ade Okafor - Tags: Home tours, Living rooms, #tour, #where Bristol, UK, #size 3 bedrooms, 96 m², #time Four years, #style Warm and original, #Import 2026-10-02 16:14 Nadia and Owen bought a 1920s terraced house in Bristol four years ago, with a cracked hallway floor, a kitchen in the wrong room and a garden full of builders' rubble. They have done almost everything themselves, one room a year, and the house now looks as if it has always been this way. They showed us round on a wet Saturday morning. ## The hallway The front door opens into a narrow hall with the stairs straight ahead. When they arrived, the floor was covered in three layers of vinyl. Under the last layer they found the original pine boards, most of them in good condition. ![](https://haven.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/10/tb-floor-before.jpg) ![](https://haven.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/10/tb-floor-after.jpg) Before and after: the hallway boards, as they found them and after a sand and two coats of oil. They sanded the boards themselves over a long weekend, replaced six that had rotted near the door with boards from a reclamation yard, and finished them with a hard wax oil. The walls are a warm off-white, and the woodwork is a soft green that runs up the stairs. ![The stair runner is wool, fixed with brass rods. It was the one thing they did not do themselves.](https://haven.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/10/tb-hall.jpg) The stair runner is wool, fixed with brass rods. It was the one thing they did not do themselves. > We wanted the hallway to say "slow down" as soon as you come in. > > **Nadia** ## The living room The front room has the original fireplace, which they opened up again after finding a bricked-up grate. The alcoves on either side hold books on the left and records on the right, on shelves Owen built from old scaffold boards. The colour is a warm clay pink that looks brown on a grey day and rose in the evening. They chose it after painting eleven sample boards and living with them for a month. ## The kitchen The biggest job was moving the kitchen. It used to be in a dark room at the back of the house, with the dining room at the front. They swapped the two: the kitchen is now in the larger middle room, open to a small dining area with doors to the garden. ![The kitchen moved into the middle room, with a table by the garden doors.](https://haven.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/10/tb-kitchen.jpg) The kitchen moved into the middle room, with a table by the garden doors. It took a plumber, an electrician and six months of cooking in the old room while the new one was built. The units are simple and painted a deep green; the worktop is a single length of iroko, a hardwood that copes well with water. 💡 Their advice for anyone moving a kitchen: put the sink where the water already is, even if it means a compromise. Moving drains is the most expensive thing in a renovation. ## The bedroom Upstairs, the main bedroom faces the street. They kept it quiet: limewashed walls, linen curtains to the floor, and a bed that sits low under the window. There is no television and almost nothing on the walls. ![The bedroom has one colour, one texture and one reading lamp.](https://haven.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/10/tb-bed.jpg) The bedroom has one colour, one texture and one reading lamp. "We sleep better in this room than we ever did in a new house," Owen says. "We think it is the thick walls, but it might be the curtains." ## The garden The garden was the last job, and the smallest. They dug out about four tonnes of rubble, laid a small patio of reclaimed brick, and planted the borders with things that like a shady city garden: ferns, hydrangeas and a climbing rose on the back wall. ![A small brick patio, two chairs and a lot of green.](https://haven.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/10/tb-garden.jpg) A small brick patio, two chairs and a lot of green. ## What they would tell you - Live in the house for a year before you change anything big. They would have put the kitchen in the wrong place. - Do one room at a time and finish it. Half-finished rooms are tiring to live in. - Keep what the house already has. The floors, the fireplace and the doors cost nothing and are the best things in it. - Buy good paint and cheap furniture, not the other way round. You can change a chair next year. ## The colours Nadia keeps a list of every paint colour in the house on the inside of a kitchen cupboard, so that touch-ups never mean guessing. These are the main ones, as close as a screen can show them. - #EDE4D3 Parchment — hallway and landing walls - #8A9A7B Fern — woodwork and the stair spindles - #B98A78 Clay pink — the living room - #2F4A3F Bottle green — the kitchen units - #E8DFD0 Lime white — the bedroom, in limewash ## The details The door handles are old brass ones from a salvage yard, polished and refitted. The light switches are simple ceramic ones that cost more than plastic and feel better every time you press them. The radiators are the original cast iron, taken off, blasted and painted the colour of the walls so that they disappear. #### How much did the whole house cost to renovate? About £38,000 over four years, most of it on the kitchen move, the rewiring and the roof. #### Where are the floorboards from? The original pine, plus six boards from a reclamation yard near Bath.