The clock was ticking. Lena de Casparis and Scott O’Donnell had six months to overtake their terrace home fixer-upper in East London. “We may solely afford to lease someplace for that point, and now we have two younger daughters, so dwelling in a constructing website wasn’t sensible; we needed to make the venture occur,” says Lena. “These home s tend to really feel like darkish tunnels,” she provides. “Ours was very in want of modernization.”

The couple are accustomed to engaged on deadline and considering deeply about particulars—Lena is the affiliate editor and tradition director of Elle UK and Scott is a movie producer at Somesuch. Along with including extra gentle, their priorities for the transform included hiring native expertise, sticking to a decent price range, and incorporating salvaged components.

These components all went into the making of the household’s new eat-in kitchen set in a backyard addition. The design is by Hølte Studio, a London workshop that mixes its personal fronts with Ikea cupboard containers. “We love Hølte’s easy, stunning work and sustainable strategy [[the company calculates its exact CO2-equivalent impact], ” says Lena. “Additionally they’re proper right here and will work inside our timeframe.” The room pays homage to a spread of references, from George O’Keefe’s pantry cabinets to the texture of the picket flooring in De Casparis’s childhood residence. Be part of us for a tour.

Images by Beth Davis, courtesy of Hølte Studio (@holte.studio).

The couple labored with George Beedle, an architect buddy of theirs, on the again addition that enabled them to have a spacious kitchen: “it occupies what was beforehand a bizarre backyard facet alley,” says Lena. Will Elworthy, one other buddy, made the desk: “we knew we wished one thing that seats twelve comfortably.”