Living Etc

What can we say, we're blown away to be featured in Britain's biggest modern homes magazine. Living Etc has given us so many ideas over the last two years, its packed with inspirational decorating ideas and design advice.

Here's what Living Etc said about their stay at LOMA Beach House;

When a distant great aunt heard Gigi and Matt were renovating a beach house, she was delighted. ‘She said, “Ooh, you can do everything in blue and white stripes – very nautical!”,’ remembers Gigi. But the end result of this ripped out and reinvented house on Camber Sands could not be further from that particular cliché. 

Instead, this is a home seen through a strong black and white filter, but with the textures turned up. There’s the rawness of builder’s merchant materials, metal light cables straight out of your old school gym and a dented and worn carpentry bench reborn as a kitchen surface.

Alongside jet-black and chalky grey walls (with a colour-poppy toddler swing that really should come in bigger sizes), they add up to a refreshingly cool version of beachside living. Less stripes. But plenty of substance. 

‘It’s a look that chimes with us – we didn’t want it too overworked,’ says Gigi. Less is more, for sure. But plenty of the style solutions, from walls in OSB (that’s the bigged-up chipboard) to poured concrete flooring and industrial-vibe plumbing, were also practical choices. They were all jobs that could be done and dusted over a long weekend.

Weekdays, Gigi, a fashion stylist, and Matt, who runs a creative digital agency MSCE, live an hour’s drive away in Tunbridge Wells. So the transformation this beach bolthole was squeezed in between their day jobs. ‘Basically, when it came to the finishes and fixtures, our primary questions was, “Can we do this ourselves?” And, if the answer was no, the next questions was, “Can we learn it on YouTube on a Friday night?”,’ says Matt. Electricians and builders did the bits beyond their scope. But Matt and Gigi sourced, mixed, painted and poured this house into its new shape.

One of the main jobs was learning how to coat walls in Ardex, think a British builder’s version of Tadelakt that gives a similarly chalky, textured feel. Gigi mastered smoothing it out one-handed because, in a perfect storm of life events, all this coincided with having their first baby. ‘Yep, we started the properly messy stage of the build with a newborn - as you do,’ she smiles.   

A year on, the plaster-like surface wraps around key walls, dipping in and out to make shelves and log stores, while poured and polished concrete covers the ground floor in one seamless surface. 

Before the couple got going on this place, it was your typical seaside retirement home. ‘An elderly widower lived here, along with just about everything he’d ever owned,’ remembers Gigi. ‘He was a very sweet guy, but the place was rammed. You couldn’t see to the other side of some rooms.’ 

But, given what Gigi and Matt had in mind, that didn’t really matter. ‘We focused on the house as its four boundary walls – ignoring the way it was divided up – so we could completely rethink the walls inside,’ says Gigi. It being a rectangular Fifties house, it was easier to give it a fresh character. ‘There were no period features, just a set of boxy rooms and two garages, which we wanted to join up as much as possible,’ she says. 

Much of the ground floor is now open-plan, while bedrooms upstairs radiate off a central chill-out TV room. ‘We designed the spaces with comfort and communality in mind,’ says Gigi, who looked to Scandinavian houses for inspiration. ‘I think that if there’s a natural flow in a house, it instinctively makes you more communicative and open. Conversation flows, light flows - everything works better like this.’ 

When it came to the details, the couple wanted impact, but without getting obsessive. ‘The whole vibe here is about being easy and relaxed,’ says Matt. ‘So, agonising over the perfect paint shade or hunting down the perfect door knob isn’t our style,’ says Matt. ‘We’re a bit more rough, ready and creative.’ 

Not that they stinted on luxe touches: the velvet curtains in several bedrooms hang on rails that extend across an entire wall and use extra fabric to create a luscious, enveloping feel. Then there’s the witty shoal of golden fish, blazing a trail through the wall over the stairs…  

As for real sea life, the back garden door opens onto the dunes of Camber Sands. This is where Corrine Day did her iconic shoot of a fresh-faced Kate Moss for The Face, where Annie Liebovitz has photographed Annie Lennox and plenty of film stars – most recently George Clooney and Matt Damon - have waited for their call to ‘Action’. 

Bedrooms have dune views but, on balance, Gigi prefers hanging out in the open plan living space. ‘I think the mark of a good house is when you can stand at its centre, turn in any direction, and see a view you love,’ she says. 

Book your stay at LOMA Beach House here www.airbnb.co.uk