It was while driving back from one of their frequent trips to Totnes, a medieval market town in one of South Devon’s prettiest corners, that Hianta Cassam Chenaï and her husband Matthias Peters first spotted the Regency townhouse they now call home. “We kept coming down to Devon for weekends to see his friends and family, then dreading going back to London,” she says. “Then we saw the ‘For Sale’ sign.” Following their Provencal wedding in 2014, the couple traded their 1970s Hoxton flat for the handsome four-storey property first built for the Duke of Somerset (owner of the nearby Berry Pomeroy Castle) in 1830. Even on dull days the neighbouring River Dart beams in its watery light, lending the Grade II-listed house an airy, seaside quality. “It still feels like a holiday home,” she says, to the sound of seagulls.
Though the site had lain empty for a few years following its previous incarnation as offices, the couple were instantly attracted to its grand proportions and closeness to town. Smitten, they didn’t realise how bad a state it was in. “We naively thought we would just give it a lick of paint,” she says. Little did they know that they were embarking on an epic renovation that entailed replacing the stairwell, the roof and windows as well as reconfiguring the layout at the top and bottom.
Today, the entrance hall gives way to a large living room dotted with midcentury design, and an office with the double-sided desk she shares with Peters, a motion graphic designer. On the lower ground floor a sequence of dingy, poky rooms is now a serene open-plan kitchen and dining room overlooking the garden, with a utility and Lilliputian corridor leading to a home recording studio fashioned from the original cellar (“It was full of stalactites”). On the first floor are two comfy guest rooms and a dark-hued bathroom electrified by blue tumbling- block floor tiles. The couple knocked into the eaves to create a cavernous master bedroom, with acres of custom storage that doubles as a room divide, cordoning off their clean-lined Ashton & Bentley roll-top bath – and enjoying exceptional views on to the river and rolling hills.
So all-consuming was the project, which took more than 18 months in planning alone, that it prompted a fully fledged career change for Chenaï. The former digital strategist has now fulfilled her long-held ambition as an interior decorator. Since she retrained, and launched HCC Interiors four years ago, the house has become a test-site for her whimsical design: “It’s like a laboratory where I get to experiment with ideas,” she says. Her latest projects include a family cottage near Exeter and a custom furniture line made in collaboration with the architectural and design firm Woco, where she’s a part-time interior design consultant. Its first fruit is the elegantly proportioned ghost console (“no legs means less cleaning”) that is sleekly positioned in the hallway.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
