Breaking The Rules

With striking colours and vibrant accessories Sara Sivewright has created a welcoming home that is unique with a strong personality

SITTING ROOM Sara decided not to reinstall a fireplace and instead used the space to make a cupboard. The pieces of fairground ephemera came from a fairground in Lincolnshire

HOME TRUTHS

LOCATION:

Brighton, East Sussex

THE OWNER:

Mark Thompson and Sara Sivewright with daughter Polly

THE PROPERTY:

Two-up, two -down, terrace house

When Sara Sivewright won a place at Brighton Poly to study Fine Art many years ago, her Dad suggested buying a house for her to live in instead of paying for student digs. He travelled down from Cheshire with just one day to look at properties and settled on a tiny two-up, two-down in a Brighton back street built in the early 1900s for railway workers.

“It was repulsive,” recalled Sara. “It had been lived in by two blokes, a carpenter and an electrician, and between them they had tried to modernise it and made an absolute mess of it. There was Seventies-style hessian wallpaper and cream carpets with burn marks and upstairs there was just a mattress on the floor and a bike!” However, Sara wasn’t put off and besides it was cheap, so she moved in and to help with

costs rented rooms to friends. A few years down the line she and her partner Mark Thompson, a teacher bought the property from her Dad and now live there with their daughter Polly.

Sara has always had a passion for bright pastels and readily admits she’s not afraid to use colour, so the house has always been decorated in a lively fashion. “I’ve never had a lot of money to do much with it, but I repaint every few years,’ she said. Inspiration for its latest incarnation came from the blues and yellows in a set of nautical charts that belonged to her Dad, who built canal boats. Sara used them to great effect as wallpaper in the dining room at the front of the house. “I’ve always loved maps, they are fascinating things, there are positions and plots on some of the charts and even the course of a race

Inspiration for its latest incarnation came from the blues and yellows in a set of nautical charts that belonged to her Dad

STAIRCASE Sara was inspired to add the seashells decoration to the stair risers after a visit to an artist’s house during Artists Open Houses in Brighton and Hove

pencilled on one of them,” she said. “It is a really ‘papery’ room and feels like a library with all our books.”

She and Mark acquired lots of their furniture like the dining table and various chairs from boot fairs, charity shops and flea markets. An Art Deco chair was bought from a shop in Bath that sells furniture using ‘up cycled’ fabrics. Their biggest bargain is probably the church pew, which they found abandoned in the street. “I think it was thrown out from a local pub,” recalled Sara. “We nearly had a fight with someone who had also taken a fancy to it.” But it’s said possession is nine-tenths of the law and Sara and Mark won. However, once they had carried their booty home it did not fit into their tiny hallway and Mark had I love the colour; it’s an in-between shade that brings sunshine in, they are all seaside colours in our house

KITCHEN Tins, utensils and enamelware and paintings from the Far East decorate the space, making a bold arty statement

to take a saw to it before they could get it into the dining room.

In the kitchen the old back door was blocked up to make more space for worktops. The ceiling was removed to expose the rafters and roof to make the space feel more open. The modern windows were replaced with period lookalikes glazed with etched glass. Sara planned the layout for the units and asked a friend to build them and then painted the room in a gentle blue because she likes its calming effect. “I always do the whole room including the ceiling the same colour and I try to keep the floors a similar tone too because I think it helps make a small room look bigger,” she added. Their biggest bargain is probably the church pew, which they found abandoned in the street

DINING ROOM Sara refers to the dining room as The Map Room. The table came from a car boot sale and the church pew was found in the street

As a teen, Sara loved visiting Chinatown in Manchester and has always been drawn to the vivid colours of Chinese and Far-Eastern artefacts, which she has used to spectacular effect in the house. Sara is the manager for Blackout, a popular shop in Brighton, well known for selling unusual items of folk-art and kitsch. Every year, she and Mark take off for a month or so to journey through Africa, South America or the Far East. On their travels they buy rugs, textiles, jewellery and ethnic ephemera both for themselves and the shop. They set out with just rucksacks and make sure to buy a few valises, tin trunks and large bags in which to transport it all home. “Polly’s baggage allowance comes in handy too,” Sara said with a smile.

When the backdoor in the kitchen was blocked up a new doorway to the backyard was made in the sitting room with a pair of French doors that Sara bought for £10 from a workman working on a nearby property refurb. With a nod

Sara has always had a passion for bright pastels and readily admits she’s not afraid to use colour

Chinese opera masks decorate the bedroom. A Chinese marriage cabinet was given a new look with a coat of paint and the trunks and tins were bought on the couple’s travels to the colours of the nautical charts she painted the whole room in a soft yellow. “I love the colour; it’s an in-between shade that brings sunshine in, they are all seaside colours in our house,” she explained. To finish off she hand painted stripes on the walls using a marker pen.

Upstairs Sara’s penchant for statement wallpaper continues with a palm fringed beach scene in the master bedroom. “We went to someone’s house for dinner and they had one. I said I really wanted one and the next day they took me to a hardware shop and I bought a poster for just four pounds,” she recalled. The couple put up tongue and groove, wooden shutters and built a cupboard across one wall and again painted the entire room in the same blue as the kitchen. “I don’t like curtains – they are fussy. I prefer shutters as they block out the light properly,” Sara added.

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She bought a Chinese elm marriage cabinet for the bedroom from a shop in Lewes. “It had been given a shabby chic treatment in grey which didn’t work for me, so I painted it my favourite sunshine yellow. The colours behave in a totally different way in this room because it gets the later afternoon light.”

Sara and Mark love living in this part of Brighton. The street is quiet and a stone’s throw from some lovely shops and delis. There is only one thing that Sara would really like to do with the house. “I would love to put double sash windows back in,” she said. “But it’s going to cost a good few thousand to do. I think I will have to hope for a windfall.” l

Photography: Bruce Hemming Copy writer: Sally Maton

POLLY’S BEDROOM Polly’s bedroom is decorated with Indian masks and African dolls. In the toy cupboard there are vintage books which Polly loves to read