“Let me see if I can show you how wonky that door frame is,” said Julia McColl, taking a reporter on a video tour of her bedroom. “That’s the one that does people’s heads in. And this is the step that catches everyone else.”
A little more than a year ago, Ms. McColl, 41, and her partner, Mark Jenkinson, 53, bought their 350-year-old home, which stands just south of the River Thames in London. It’s possible that the 1,022-square-foot house once possessed a host of 90-degree angles, but those days are long over.
“One of our friends is particularly OCD, and he struggles with it,” Ms. McColl said about the crooked paneling, which makes picture-hanging a perfectionist’s hell.
Still, she and Mr. Jenkinson embrace the higgledy-piggledy character. Borrowing a description first used by Ms. McColl’s sister, Lydia McGahey, a primary-school teacher in Derbyshire, England, they proudly call their home the “Wonky House,” and had a sign made with that name.
The couple, who both work for financial services companies — Ms. McColl in customer experience, Mr. Jenkinson in technology — had been renting around the corner for several years when they decided to buy their own place, and hoped to remain in the lively area where they lived, near Bermondsey Street, between Tower Bridge and Borough Market.
They appreciated that London’s ancient bones continued to rattle in the neighborhood despite the influx of new construction, and that the Wonky House was only a few doors from the ruins of Bermondsey Abbey, an 11th-century Benedictine monastery. Though a spring chicken comparatively — it dates from the late 17th century — the Grade II-listed little house needed new electrical and plumbing systems, updated window frames and new roof supports. The brick exterior walls were cracked in both front and back. The kitchen and single bathroom were not just tired, they were exhausted.
Somewhat cowed, the couple pressed on, paying £675,000 (about $920,000). Ms. McColl’s father, an interior decorator, was “desperate to get his hands on it,” she said. As much as she loved her father, the job was too big for any one person. Instead, he helped select the building company that supervised the renovation (and recently painted the stairs).
Candidates who suggested straightening the walls were automatically disqualified.
The work was done from May to October of 2024, at an estimated cost of £180,000 (about $245,000) for repairs and décor. It would have been finished sooner, Ms. McColl said, had a box of irreplaceable vintage tiles for the shower not arrived in shards.
Among the helpers was deVOL Kitchens, which breathed new life into the 199-square-foot kitchen by adding apple green Shaker cabinets, copper countertops, sky blue shelves that matched the narrow, 19th-century fireplace and an ebony Lacanche range gleaming with serious intent. (The home has four working fireplaces, which burn smokeless wood or coal, as required by city ordinance.) Next to the kitchen, a Tuscan red living room is centered on a rose velvet sectional sofa.
Asked about the brave color choices, Ms. McColl said she entrusted Kate Humphreys, a consultant at Little Greene, a British paint company, to guide her. Upstairs, beyond a Light Bronze Green hallway, the couple’s bedroom walls and ceiling were covered in a pinkish brown called Nether Red. The adjacent dressing room, which also serves as a home office, leaned into the Victorian with a green version of William Morris’s Blackthorn wallpaper pattern.
Also upstairs, the bathroom, in an ivory shade called Ferdinand, was given a pink marble-topped vanity and a chocolate-and-ivory diamond pattern painted on the floorboards. The shower is lined in zellige tile, while floral cement tile (a replacement for the mangled original choice) covers the floor.
Ms. McColl collected many of the furnishings over the years from vintage shops, driven by the same impulse that led her to open a side business with Ms. McGahey called Sister Sundays Antiques. She said Mr. Jenkinson has yet to recover from the experience of dragging home the large gilded mirror that sits on the living room mantel, after they spontaneously bought it in Paris.
No one was shocked that the house came with minimal storage, but the wonkiness meant that new cabinetry had to be custom fitted to irregular walls. A unit that hides the television was added to the living room (it matches existing storage there), and new wardrobes were introduced to the dressing room. In their previous home, which was larger, the couple failed to make use of every room, Ms. McColl said. Here, there is no wasted space.
She does miss her little garden, though, while Mr. Jenkinson laments the loss of his outdoor grill (he now has an indoor one, which is part of the range). The Wonky House is surrounded by other people’s houses (including a handsome former brewery in back) and flower beds. Whatever pleasure the couple gets from nature is purely vicarious.
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