Original kitchen tour over here.
This space has so many of the architectural details we love in mid-century homes — strong horizontal lines, built-in joinery, minimal handles and a layout designed to feel completely integrated with the architecture of the house.
The warm timber cabinetry contrasts with the black worktops and dark mosaic floor, while the red tiled splashback becomes almost like a feature wall within the room.
Even the window placement feels intentional, framing the garden and pulling natural light deep into what is actually quite a compact space.
It’s also a reminder of how differently kitchens were designed in this era. Lower, calmer and far more connected to the overall architecture rather than treated as a separate “showpiece” room.
#midcentury #singlestoreyhouse #architecture #kitchen #70sstyle
But is that still the case?
Living with these systems decades later raises difficult questions. They’re harder to repair, less efficient by modern standards, and not always compatible with newer technology. Plus they don't always work when you move in.
That’s the complicated reality of preserving a modernist home.
Not every original feature is still the most sustainable option.
And we’re learning that caring for a house like this isn’t about freezing it in time — it’s about deciding what evolves, and what stays.
#midcentury #singlestoreyhouse #solarthermal #sustainability #solarenergy
There’s something quietly fascinating about early attempts at “future-proof” living.
This house arrived with a surprisingly sophisticated energy setup for its time: solar thermal panels feeding the hot water cylinder, a separate feed-in tariff PV array generating electricity, and electric underfloor heating running beneath the original tiled floors.
On paper, it sounds wonderfully forward-thinking. And in many ways, it was.
But systems like these also reveal how quickly ideas around sustainability evolve.
The solar thermal still makes a certain kind of sense — using the sun directly to heat water is simple, elegant engineering. The PV panels too, especially under older feed-in tariff agreements, can remain financially beneficial long after installation.
The complication is the electric underfloor heating.
Back when electricity was comparatively cheap and the grid less scrutinised, electric UFH beneath large thermal-mass tiled floors probably felt modern and efficient. Today, running resistance-based electric heating across a whole house can be eye-wateringly expensive unless paired with significant on-site generation and storage. Even then, it’s often far less efficient than contemporary wet underfloor systems fed by heat pumps.
And that leaves us in a slightly emotional architectural dilemma.
Because we absolutely love the tiles.
They belong to the house. They’re tactile, grounded, unmistakably mid-century. But keeping them may also mean accepting compromises in thermal performance and future heating strategy. Retrofitting sustainability into modernist homes is rarely straightforward — sometimes the most beautiful materials are tied to systems that no longer make environmental or economic sense.
It’s one of the more honest realities of restoring houses like this: sustainability isn’t always about preserving everything exactly as it was. Sometimes it’s about deciding carefully what survives, what adapts, and what quietly becomes part of the story of its time.
#sustainability #renovation #midcentury #singlestoreyhouse #architecture
Look at this. This is the garage before we move in. We can't wait to show you it empty when we arrive. We can't imagine how it will feel. Smaller? larger? Who knows, but we're excited.
#midcentury #singlestoreyhouse #reno #packing
20 sleeps until we move into the 1971 time capsule.
Current preparations include: 📦 boxes everywhere
🔌 questioning every electrical decision made in the 70s
🌲 convincing ourselves the woodland garden is “manageable”
👦👦👶 keeping three boys alive through the chaos
Not panicking at all.
#midcentury #singlestoreyhouse #parenting #packing
New house. New town. New routines. A lot of change when you’re five, two, and five months old.
We wanted a way to help the boys picture the move, so, we gave AI a photo of the dining space and asked it to imagine it with our family in it — toys on the table, baby bits everywhere, general chaos.
And honestly… it got pretty close. It even retained the bottles on the cupboard tops knowing the parent survival techniques are not much different in 2026 than they apparently were in 1971.
Do like this post if you think we need more bottles on the kitchen cupboards for handling a move with three under five...And three boys at that!
(And if we could all just politely ignore the mysterious foot passing through the chair seat, that would be great.)
Hurrah for our pretend AI kids. Still chaotic.
Family life, just with more unit intake and fewer anatomical rules.
#marcelbreuer #newparents #midcenturylightingdesign #midcentury #reno
The master bedroom.
A true 1971 fever dream.
Fluorescent strip lights.
Wild curtains.
Wall-to-wall built-in storage.
And, until recently, a floating bed.
Sadly, the floating bed is leaving with its owner — which feels like a personal loss, if we’re honest.
Equal parts iconic and questionable.
Like most of the house, it’s a lot to take in.
Some bits will stay.
Some bits absolutely won’t.
The curtains are currently on probation. What's your thoughts?
The original lights are off to their rightful home — which means we now enter the highly scientific process of pretending to know anything about lighting.
Some pieces of a house are more than just fixtures — they’re part of a family story.
The three pendant lights in the house won’t be staying with us; they’re being taken by the architect Bruce and Lena’s children as keepsakes from the home their parents designed and built. While we’re sad to see them go, it feels right that these pieces of the house’s history remain with the family.
They were always excluded from the sale and will be replaced in time, but knowing they’ll continue as part of Bruce and Lena’s story makes their absence feel a little easier.
What an earth do we replace them with? Any suggestions just hit up our dms.
#midcenturylightingdesign
A space that still carries the imprint of its original purpose.
Built for an architect, the office still held its original drawing board when we first viewed the house — the very surface where ideas, plans and elevations for this home (and perhaps many others) were first brought to life. Beside it sat a large stack of tracing paper and the original hand-drawn plans for the house itself; a tangible link to its beginnings.
There’s something quite special about standing in a room designed for creating, with the very tools of its creation still in place. A reminder that good design begins long before the walls go up — with sketches, revisions, imagination, and a blank sheet of paper.
As we begin our own chapter here, it feels fitting that this room will continue to serve the purpose it was designed for. The drawing board may have gone with the family as part of their farewell to the house, but the creative spirit of the space remains.
#midcentury
#singlestoreyhouse
#drawing
#architecture
Reception year in UK (4-5 years old) is such a funny age for language — everything is wordplay, soundplay, and testing out how words fit together. Rhymes, nonsense words, made-up names… it’s like watching language being built in real time.
We were talking about putting a little plaque on the apple tree, the sort you see in a National Trust arboretum, and asked our son what he thought it should be called. After a very serious pause, he came up with a completely invented, rhyming nonsense name that had us trying (and failing) not to laugh.
Entirely innocent, entirely committed, and now — whether it ever makes it onto a plaque or not — that tree has an unofficial family name for the foreseeable future. A touch on the rude side, accidentally.
#singlestoreyhouse #wordplay #kids #apples
