The Brief
Restoring Character to an Edwardian Home
Louise Boyce had purchased a five-bedroom period home in Farnham that had been modernised in a way that stripped away everything that gave it character. The original features — the details, the proportions, the sense of craft — had been removed and replaced with finishes that bore no relationship to the architecture. It is a situation Ademchic encounters regularly, in both private homes and listed developments: properties where previous work has erased the very quality that made them worth buying.
Restoring that character — returning detail, warmth, and material confidence to homes where it has been lost — is one of Ademchic’s core specialisms. Whether the property is a Grade II listed development or a family home that has been gutted and generically refitted, the approach is the same: understand what the architecture is asking for, and design interiors that answer it.
Ademchic’s founder, Karolina Adamczyk, saw Louise’s home on Instagram and recognised immediately that this was a property that could be Ademchic’d — brought back to life with the character, detail, and considered luxury it had been denied. She contacted Louise directly, and the project became a design-led reimagining of the key spaces: entrance, staircase, kitchen and living areas, and primary suite — shaped entirely by how Louise, Jesse, and their three children actually inhabit the home.
Ademchic’s design concept and spatial planning came first, establishing the creative direction and footprint for the entire renovation. Mitchell Evans Architecture was appointed afterwards to take that vision forward into delivery.
The Approach
Spatial Planning & Floor Plan Optimisation
At Ademchic, spatial planning is where every project begins — before design direction, before materiality, before anything visual is produced. The floor plan is the single most consequential decision in any residential project, and in a period home where the original plan has been compromised, it becomes even more critical.
At House of Boyce, the previous renovation had created spatial problems that no amount of decoration could resolve. The original staircase had been removed entirely, and fitting a replacement into the constrained footprint it left behind became a design challenge that shaped much of the ground-floor planning. Ademchic developed the spatial brief and staircase solution before the architects were appointed, creating the footprint that would guide the rest of the project.
The ground floor was assessed for how the family moves through it — the morning routine with three children, cooking and hosting in the kitchen, transitioning from the entrance into the heart of the home. The primary suite upstairs was reconceived as a retreat: a generous bedroom leading into a walk-in wardrobe and an ensuite designed with both a walk-in shower and a freestanding bath, creating the kind of considered luxury that a home of this calibre demands.
Floor plan — ground floor, spatial planning by Ademchic
Floor plan — primary suite, showing walk-in wardrobe and ensuite
Design Concept
The design concept was developed to restore what the previous renovation had erased — the sense that this is an Edwardian home, with all the proportion, warmth, and material confidence that implies. The approach was not historicist pastiche; it was a contemporary interpretation of period character, shaped by how Louise, Jesse, and their three children actually inhabit the space.
Ademchic produced the full design concept with iterations, allowing Louise and Jesse to refine the direction and present resolved specifications to their kitchen supplier and construction team. Two options were developed for the entrance — the first moment of arrival, and the space that sets the tone for the entire home. The kitchen and living areas were designed around the rituals of family life: a symmetrical kitchen layout with a generous island that has become, in Louise’s words, the real hub of the home.
A VR tour of the initial concept was produced to allow the family to experience the design spatially before any construction began — a tool that proved particularly valuable in a project where the existing layout bore so little resemblance to the intended result.
Design concept render — entrance hall, Ademchic design
Design concept render — kitchen and living space, Ademchic design
Design concept render — primary suite and ensuite, Ademchic design
The Transformation
The Completed Home
The completed home speaks for itself. Where the inherited interior was a catalogue of lost opportunities — original features stripped, character replaced with generic modernisation — the resolved design is specific to this house, this family, and the Edwardian architecture that was always there beneath the surface.
The property has since been featured on The Luxury Home Show and in Kitchens Bedrooms & Bathrooms magazine, and is now available as a photoshoot and filming location through Styled Home Studios — a testament to the quality of the finished result, and to a design that photographs as well as it lives.
It is a clear illustration of what becomes possible when a client with vision finds the right design partner — and of the difference between renovation treated as cosmetic improvement and renovation treated as an act of restoration.
Video: The Luxury Home Show — completed House of Boyce interior walkthrough
“Louise Boyce testimonial — to be extracted from video”
Louise Boyce