A higgledy-piggledy house in Henley-on-Thames brought back to life with a playful mixture of colour and shapes by Joanne Burgess

‘Our curiosity got the better of us and we went to see it. I love mid-century shapes and was drawn by those features’, says Joanne. The footprint of the house is roughly the same as it was: the kitchen and TV room are on the ground floor, with a second sitting room, an office and four bedrooms spread across two floors above. She spent the first few months knocking through doorways, closing others up, getting rid of the surplus bedrooms, and generally creating a sense of flow – something the disordered B&B had been sorely missing.

‘I try to create curious rooms, but also wanted to be sensitive to all of the different architectural eras of the house’, says Joanne. Thus, she incorporated a mixture of mid-century structures and materials (beech ply dominates throughout), as well as those inspired by the Italian post-modernist architectural group Memphis Milano. Its shapes and colours can be seen in the triangles, scallops and circles scattered playfully on the joinery. They sit atop cupboards, or have been integrated into panelling. In the main bedroom, two semi-circle blind pelmets frame the windows either side of the bed.

Walls and woodwork in Edward Bulmer’s ‘Jonquil’ and panelling in ‘Yeabridge Green’ from Farrow & Ball make for a bright and energising space. On the Rosewood bedside cabinets, which Joanne bought from Ancien et Jolie, sit two antique lamps bought from a salvage shop. Above the bed is a William Klein print – another charity shop find.

Lucas Allen

A palate of blues, greens and pinks on the walls and painted up the stairs link these later parts of the house with their carefully preserved Georgian counterparts. Joanne’s eclectic collection of furniture, accessories and art – mostly picked up in charity shops, antique shops, reclamation yards (LASSCO is a favourite of hers) or on eBay – fills each room.

‘I wanted it to be fun, but not folly’, says Joanne. Fun, it certainly is. At the base of the winding staircase, sits a large ‘Art Room’, named for the mixture of nicknacks on the shelves and bright canvases on the walls. Formerly the architect’s waiting room, Joanne kept the hung ceiling intact as a nod to the house’s previous custodians. In the centre is a circular sofa from ebay which used to live in a ballroom in Blackpool, providing a perch for dancers to catch their breath. At the far end of the room Joanne closed off a set of doors which used to link this room to the TV room behind. In their place she added a reading nook upholstered in ‘Zaggerty’ by Sophia Frances.

The walls are painted in Cromarty by Farrow & Ball, and Joanne created a bright stripe on the floor using its ‘Mizzle’ and ‘India Yellow’.

Lucas Allen

‘In the kitchen there were windows, doors and curtains everywhere. It was interesting, but didn’t make any sense’, says Joanne politely. ‘My husband wanted to create an LA-style of indoor-outdoor living’, she adds, and so the two garden-facing walls were knocked out and replaced with vast glass doors which can be pushed back completely. Colourful terrazzo tiles on the floor provided a starting point for the room's palette. Against walls painted in ‘Jonquil’ by Edward Bulmer hang a variety of kitchen-themed artwork: paintings of people eating, an old french menu and decorative plates. ‘I try to stick to a bit of a theme with the artwork – always food-related in the kitchen and always put ships in the bathroom’, says Joanne.

‘Where possible I will always keep a period feature’, she says of the Georgian parts of the house: the upstairs sitting room, and the guest room on the floor above it. The rickety floorboards, sash windows and wooden panelling on the walls are largely untouched, though updated with a fresh coat of paint and in the reading nook, a diagonal chequerboard pattern on the floor makes for an ‘intimate space which leads the eye to the window’.

Now that she is finished, the house is many things: joyful, colourful, eclectic and welcoming. No longer the convoluted space it once was, there is a sense of harmony here, where historic elements rub shoulders with modern ones happily.

thecurioushouse.co.uk