Creating A Designer Family Home

Kim and Simon's 1960s house may exude designer chic, but it's also a practical home for their family (including pets).

Down In Deepest Kent

Discovering Kim Jacob and Simon Godfrey's groovy 1960s-built home comes as a bit of a shock. Sitting in nearly an acre of palm-tree planted garden, it is hidden behind a high wall at the end of a street of 1930s semis in deepest suburban Kent.

'We haven't been able to track down the architect and still don't know how it came to be built here,' says Kim, a make-up artist and founder of Angelique, a range of natural mother and baby products. Inspired by the work of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, designer of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the house is a vision of light and space.

It's also an ideal family home for Kim, Simon, their two kids, Oliver (11), Alice (7), and cats, Molly and Polly. But when they first clapped eyes on it seven years ago, however, it was a very different story - the house bore absolutely no resemblance to its original design - or to how it is now.

'It had been frighteningly revamped in the 1970s in mock Victorian style, complete with swirly patterned carpets, chintzy wallpaper and frilly curtains,' says Kim, shuddering. 'It also had dodgy coloured bathrooms with disgusting shag pile carpets and there were Artex ceilings and fake curved arches everywhere.'

Kim and Simon had the wood and metal staircase specially made by John McClaffity. It links the living area to the mezzanine bedroom floor above. The retro chair (on the landing) is an original Vasili-Wassily, but Dwell do a good copy for just £125.