It is an old American expression, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” says Sarah Coates, who lives in this extended family home with husband Tom and their children, Edgar, Calvin, Susannah and Rosalind. 
 

“The flood we had over Christmas 2013 was unfortunate, but we turned it into an opportunity to implement some plans we had for our house sooner rather than later,” explains Sarah. 

 

Three years earlier, just before her twins were born, Sarah enlisted the help of designer Lisa Melvin to transform their two bathrooms. 
 

“I knew exactly who to go to for the kitchen, utility and boot room/wet room fitting out.” Sarah took a hands-on approach by pulling ideas together from magazines and arranging meetings with her builder and Lisa to develop a timeline for the project. “Ideally I wanted the major building work to begin during the children’s holidays so we could be out of the way”.
 

The boot room and wet room planning and construction commenced immediately. The brief being to re-purpose the current kitchen and wardrobe units into a highly functional space for this busy family of six, including a large island to accommodate sewing and crafts and a general work and storage area, while adding in an extra shower room. 
 

The kitchen brief was to create a large, cheerful open plan kitchen/diner/living space and Sarah also wanted to incorporate a coordinated utility room. Typically, a project of this size could run up to twelve months from concept to completion – drawing on her extensive project management expertise, Lisa delivered the project on a very tight schedule of just less than thirty days, enabling the family to avoid the stress and upheaval of major works. 
 

Lisa also designed a bespoke liquor and drinks cabinet. Inspired by Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian, colours were selected to complement the Tom Dixon lighting over the island and various sized panels contrasted the uniform kitchen design. 
 

A feature wood burner was to be included in the new scheme. After much deliberation and teamwork, in was decided that the perfect solution would be to incorporate a built-in Jide double-sided wood burner between the kitchen living space and the newly formed library