How We Decide Which Buildings to Save
People always ask the same question. How do you choose them. Three buildings restored and a fourth one we are still debating and the answer has never been the same twice.
The first one was simple. It was down the road. A 1930s house with porthole windows boarded up and a garden that had not been touched in years. I drove past it every day and one morning I just stopped the car and looked at it properly. Behind the boards you could see the original curves of the facade. The bones were good. I rang the agent that afternoon.
Daniel thought I was mad. He came around to it when we pulled up the carpet and found the original terrazzo underneath. That was the moment he understood what I had been trying to explain. These buildings have layers. You peel back what people have done to them over the decades and underneath there is something beautiful waiting.
Mum and Dad came on board for that first one. Dad did the joinery and painting. Mum did the sanding and kept everyone on schedule which is the hardest job of all. Jess came in at the end and did the curtains and soft furnishings. All period appropriate. All sourced or made to match the original decade. That is what makes the difference between a renovation and a restoration. The details have to be right.
The second building was different. Nobody was selling it. It was just sitting there. An old apartment block with Deco detailing on the facade that was crumbling. I wrote to the owner. Then I wrote again. Then Daniel and I drove out there and knocked on the door. It took six months to convince them to sell. But when we got inside and saw the original plasterwork on the ceilings we knew it was worth the wait.
The third one found us. Someone who had seen what we do on our site sent a message saying there was a building in a regional town that was about to be demolished. We drove three hours to look at it. Bought it within the week. That one nearly broke us. The roof was worse than it looked. The costs went over. Daniel and I had some long conversations about whether we had taken on too much. But we finished it. And it is probably the one I am most proud of.
Now there is a cinema. An Art Deco cinema in a small town that has been closed for years. The facade is stunning. Geometric patterns above the entrance. The original signage still bolted to the wall. Inside it is a mess but the proportions are extraordinary.
The question is what to do with it. Restoring it as a cinema would be incredible but running a cinema is a completely different thing to restoring a building. We are not in the business of operating venues. We find them and we fix them and then we decide whether to keep or sell.
Daniel wants to restore it and lease it to someone who knows how to run a cinema. Mum thinks we should turn it into a community space. Dad just wants to see the ceiling. Jess has already started looking at fabric samples which tells me she has made up her mind regardless of what the rest of us decide.
I do not know yet. But I know we will probably do it. That is how it works with us. We see something worth saving and we cannot walk away from it. The decision has never really been about money or logic. It has always been about whether the building deserves another chance.
So far the answer has always been yes.