Behind the traditional stained-glass front door of an Edwardian terraced house in Southfields lies a remarkable renovation inspired by bright and airy Mediterranean living.
TEXT JAYNE DOWLE IMAGES HATCH + MASON / CHRIS SNOOK
Belonging to 32-year-old yoga teacher Molly Salamon and husband Dylan, 34, an entrepreneur and events organiser, this three-storey house in Southfields, south London was taken apart and rebuilt, leaving only the facade and first floor intact.
As avid travellers, Molly and Dylan wanted to bring the warmth and ambience of Ibiza to south London, creating a tranquil and organic home to help them think of sunny climes even on the greyest London morning. “We wanted it to feel like we were on holiday every day,” says Molly.
It was a huge undertaking, especially as Molly was pregnant with their son Otto, born just four weeks before the family moved into their totally transformed home in June 2023. “We lived at my mother-in-law’s in Surrey during the build,” says Molly. “There is no way we could have lived here while the work was being done. The whole thing took 10 months. It was quite a long time.”
Molly and Dylan bought their house for just over £1m in June 2021. When they met, Dylan owned an apartment in Westminster. But after the couple acquired their first dog – a miniature dachshund – they moved to Clapham to be closer to green spaces.
During the Covid pandemic in 2020 Molly says they wanted to get out of London altogether and started looking at farms in Devon and Kent: “It was ridiculous, we would spend our weeks looking at different properties. It would take us four hours to drive down to Devon.”
Then they decided that rather than upping sticks, they would stay in London and find a family-sized house to renovate – with Molly in charge of the design. She’s the “more creative and arty” half of the duo; before becoming a yoga teacher she worked in the jewellery business as a stone buyer. Dylan’s business interests include The Curling Club, an Alpline-themed curling pop-up serving food and cocktails on London’s South Bank.
“We put an offer down in Brixton, but fortunately it was the fate of the universe, the sellers pulled out on the day of the exchange,” Molly smiles. “By this point, we must have been to look at about 50 houses and put down five offers. We came to look at three properties around Southfields. This one had been on the market for a bit longer, it was definitely a bit of a renovation job.”
As soon as she and Dylan walked in, “it felt like this is the one. It was enough of a project, and just right for us. It was the little things – the top bedroom windows look over everyone’s gardens, our house is slightly wider than the other houses on the grid, and the garden is a good size. Within 30 minutes we’d cancelled all other offers, and went for this one. It all felt serendipitous.”
The summer of 2022, with the couple having married in June of that year, they holidayed on the Balearic island of Ibiza, known for its cool, laid-back and airy interior design. “With the house purchase secured, we really started to think about how Ibizan style might influence our own design,” says Molly. “We really wanted to get in the arches and the curves, and the textures – the marble vanity unit in the master bedroom, and the micro cement in the shower, it makes it feel like a cave – that inspired us on Ibiza. I love that we’ve achieved that, it makes the house feel really tranquil.”
From the start Molly and Dylan intended to carry out a full renovation. They found their architect, London-based practice Hatch + Mason, by recommendations following a school playground chat. “My sister is an interior designer and her husband is an architect – he was too busy to do our house,” says Molly. “I was talking to her about the difficulties of finding the right architect for our project, then a week later, she was in the playground and got chatting to someone who had just had their house renovated by Hatch + Mason. We knew straight away that they understood what we wanted to achieve.”
Once Hatch + Mason was on board, it then took until June 2022 to find the right builders, Surrey-based new-build and refurbishment specialists Klas Projects, and to wait until this busy firm had enough space in the schedule to accommodate such a major project.
The house came with few original period features. The previous owner had carried out a renovation 30 years earlier, during which the fireplaces had been removed, leaving the front door as the most intact traditional element. So there was plenty of scope for a new vision; a four bedroom home in the heart of London that brought the soft tones and calmness of the Mediterranean to the city.
“Escapism was on my mind,” says Molly. “I wanted lots of arches in the house, to have lots of curvature, a really nice feel and shapes. This kind of leaned into the original house anyway. It’s so wonky, there’s no straight wall in our house.”
There were also technical considerations. The loft had already been converted, but not to current Building Regulations, so upgrading the top floor was a priority, and the existing kitchen extension was poorly completed. “It was quite a big situation,” says Molly. “The loft conversion had to be completely redone. None of the timber had been signed off. We bought a house with a loft conversion and a kitchen extension and you just don’t expect this. We just had to face it and find a way to pay for it.”
At first, the plan was to adapt more of the original house. “But the extent of demolition proposed was so severe that it made better construction sense to demolish almost all of the original house,” says Hatch + Mason principal architect Andreas Andreaou. “The project was nearly a new build, but we salvaged materials such as brickwork and timber wherever possible.”
It sounds onerous, taking down almost an entire house and starting again, but Andreas explains that the process was fairly simple. For the most part, it was undertaken in stages. “There was a phased approach to the build, which enabled the front facade to maintain its position while the works were being undertaken. It helped that it was a terraced house, because the surrounding properties provided their own support.”
He also points out that maintaining the basic structure of the first floor throughout meant it “acted as kind of a prop”, keeping the Salamons’ house secure when the internal walls had been removed. The second floor structure was the next part of the build; the roof was removed and replaced with a tin covering that kept the building weatherproof while work was carried out underneath.
As new rooms were configured, the practice worked alongside a structural engineer to devise load-bearing walls and install steels for support. At the heart of the house there is now a double-height atrium, an impressive focal point forming the kitchen-living-dining area. This 4.7m high space, in a two-storey masonry-built extension topped with a sedum roof, opens up the ground floor both vertically and horizontally. With a new curved bulkhead at the back, suggesting the proportions of a Mediterranean palazzo, this north-facing room is flooded with natural light from a magnificent oculus rooflight, and finished internally with limewash plaster.
The extension, which takes the ground floor living space to 91m2, is clad in thermally-modified Scandinavian Scots pine, to form a distinctive external feature wall – giving the house its nickname, ‘Waffle’. Pivot doors lead into the generous 65m2 garden, which Hatch + Mason landscaped in Mediterranean style, adding a useful shed to store the couple’s exercise equipment.
“The ladder effect on the extension’s cladding was designed to align seamlessly with the glazing and parapets, creating a cohesive look,” says Andreas. “It was done this way to give the impression that the cladding is floating, without visible fixings, screws, or brackets, enhancing a sense of upward movement.”
The loft conversion was redone and now contains a study, nursery and family bathroom. It’s clad in a sustainable bronze cladding, made from treated copper, which also highlights in a feature bay window in the main bedroom, one of two bedrooms (both ensuite) on the 71m2 first floor. “We chose the bronze and the Scandinavian Scots pine to bring in warm colour,” says Andreas. “It’s a stark contrast to the industrial grey tones typical of many London extensions.”
The house is not in a Conversation Area, and the planning permission for the work was obtained from Wandsworth Borough Council in 10 weeks, with no hitches. “It was very smooth, owing to the nature of adjoining buildings, which were significantly higher than the existing house,” says Andreas. “This meant it wasn’t overly challenging .”
Rebuilding also meant a more thermally-effective home could be created. This was achieved by establishing meticulous levels of airtightness, adding a mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) system and ensuring the entire external fabric of the building, including the existing front facade and new roof, achieved outstanding insulation performance with a mixture of fibre and solid products. The MVHR supplies passive heating backed up by a high-performance gas boiler.
As this ambitious rebuild progressed, did Molly and Dylan ever wonder if they had made a huge mistake and should have stuck to a more straightforward renovation? “It was quite daunting at first,” Molly admits. “I really felt for our neighbours at the time, there was huge scaffolding everywhere. But I think we were just quite excited, every time we visited the house, even if loads of progress wasn’t happening, we would see it evolving. And as soon as the internal walls are up, you can start to picture your furniture in place and living there.” All internal walls are of timber studwork.
Molly loved becoming hands on, especially sourcing materials. “For the kitchen I wanted Calcutta quartz, with the browny-coloured veins to tie in with the lime plaster,” she explains. “Andreas gave me a fabulous contact, MGLW, a stone supplier in south London. You have to make an appointment, but they do the most amazing marble, quartz, granite and limestone. The fabricators did a really good job. The shelf in the kitchen is four metres long!”
“Our practice’s mission statement is “created by us, inspired by you”,” says Andreas. “It’s all about bringing the client on board and making them part of the team. We collaborate together. Our practice is not about imposing a certain ‘look’ on a client, or a house style. It’s a representation of a client’s ambitions, own taste and character.”
Molly says she “absolutely loves” coming home from holiday now and feels very comfortable in their new family home. “It works with a toddler, people are often surprised to find,” she adds. “The top floor having the bedroom layouts as they are, Otto’s got the whole space to himself. There’s a stairgate so it’s a safe space, his space, his toys. And the huge family kitchen and snug area – even having the kitchen island in the centre of the room – works too. Otto can run around, he’s got a racetrack!”
The architect estimates a home of this size – now 203m2 in total – to this specification, would currently cost in the region of £2,900 plus VAT per sqm to re-build. The Salamons’ investment of around half a million pounds – and a lot of courage – paid off. The house is now both a welcome haven and ideal entertaining space for Molly, Dylan and Otto and their now two miniature dachshunds.
“When we had finished, we asked the estate agent who sold us the house to come and have a look,” says Molly. “She was amazed at what we had done with the space. Most houses that get renovated around here very much stick with a traditional floor plan, they don’t break the mould.”