Facing the complete renovation of a three-storey Edwardian house with a just-born baby to look after is daunting enough – finding out you’re expecting another halfway through is a whole other proposition entirely. But for Simon (aka Cookie) and Sophia Cook, knowing their labours would result in a forever home to raise their children, the work was worth it. Here, they reflect on the high and lows of the renovation and what, for them, makes a good family home.

Sophia: “I’m starting to go down the Instagram hole of looking at other peoples’ houses, and they’re all great and brilliant. But it can sometimes become a very sterile catalogue and I look at people like, ‘You’ve got kids and your room’s all white… how do you manage that? Are you some kind of wizard?!’

“We’d rather something lasted a pretty long time and that’s why we’ve invested so much into this house, because hopefully the kids will be using it one day, or they’ll only just be taking it over when we’re old.”

Simon: “When we first started searching for a house, we were looking for a doer-upper, but then we got cold feet because our first baby was due and we weren’t sure about living on a building site with a new-born. We found a period house in Norbury and put an offer in.”

Sophia: “I knew something wasn’t right though, because Simon kept on looking. One day, which happened to be my birthday, he said, ‘Is there any chance we could go and see this house?’ I looked online and saw it was a complete tip, but I just went along with it.

“Walking around the house, you could see the potential. It had original William Morris wallpaper in the hallway, original cornicing, fireplaces and doors – it was beautiful in that sense. But it also hadn’t been touched since the 1970s – it was just awful, and I was six months pregnant at the time.

“After three or four goes, our offer was accepted. Everyone kept saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’s a probate sale, you’ll be in there in no time’. We moved in when Alfred, our first son, was two weeks old…”

Simon: “It needed so much work. We had to strip everything out that wasn’t original and start again, pretty much. We had quite a strong identity of what we wanted, which was something comfortable, that reflected our personalities and wasn’t too highly polished.”

Sophia: “There’s no shame in a house not being perfect. I’m a bit clumsy and heavy-handed so we wanted something that could take a few scratches and marks, without affecting the overall aesthetic of the house.”

Simon: “Yeah, it had to be hardwearing because I think when we bought this house we knew it was going to be a family home for a long time, and the kids are pretty destructive, so we didn’t want anything delicate.”

Sophia: “Because we were investing so much into it, we only wanted to do it once. We’ll never change our kitchen, hopefully, because it’s bespoke and expensive, but the material itself, plywood, is hard-wearing enough that it will last a long time.”

Simon: “The colour in the kitchen all started from the green range cooker I’d always wanted. The idea was to have two different palettes, one for downstairs and one for upstairs, based on the spectrum. So downstairs is the first half – oranges, yellows and greens – and then upstairs is blues, pinks and purples, the second half.

“The idea was, rather than make it all one colour, to almost mix and match as many colours as we could, without it looking too garish. I think in both of us there’s this unconventional streak that didn’t want the norm of painting the house in neutral colours.”

Sophia: “What do I value most now it’s done? That it’s done! That we’re not living in the Travel Lodge, that I’ve got a bath that I can sit in! And the kitchen. The kitchen was really the stuff of nightmares; like a scene out of Saw. You dropped something, and just thought, ‘Oh my God, let’s throw it away.’ Just having somewhere that’s really quite homely, and a safe place for the kids.”

Simon: “And so much more space. About three times as much space as the old flat.”

Sophia: “Yeah it feels massive to us. It was a two-bedroom flat, but the smaller bedroom was Cookie’s wardrobe – Cookie’s got loads of clothes.”

Simon: “That was your wardrobe!”

Sophia: “No it wasn’t! We’ve got a spare room downstairs, which is now his walk-in wardrobe. So just having space is great, especially in the current climate. If we were living in the flat with two kids, a dog, and having to work from home, we wouldn’t have the space. It just wouldn’t happen. Cookie can work upstairs without the disruption of the kids too. And the huge family bathroom with a big bath that we stick all the kids in is great.

“And the garden too, of course, where Cookie does his DIY projects. He’s built shelves, upcycled chest of drawers, made shoe racks. It’s nice that the kids get to see it, and will eventually know their dad built all of this. It’s a constant project, because a house like this is never done!”