Home fit for a champion

It is not easy to pin Josh Lewsey down. The rugby fullback who plays for Wasps and England, was in Scotland last weekend, Italy the weekend before that, and barely had he set foot back in his Battersea home before he was setting out for a couple of days rest in Cornwall.

For someone so fast moving, the 27-year-old is surprisingly passionate about bricks and mortar. So far, he has bought and worked on three London properties: living in Chiswick and then Kew Bridge, and, most recently, Battersea.

When Lewsey moved into the four-bedroom terrace house in SW11, with his girlfriend and boxer dog, his plans were to stay. He had taken time to get to know the area and viewed numerous houses until he found the one he could turn into his ideal home. However, after two years of perfecting the place, he is selling up and moving out of town.

He says, ruefully: "I did intend to live in the house. It's a lovely, friendly area around the Northcote Road; a really nice community, with good bars and the market. I know it's a cliché, but it has a villagey feel." He adds: "I looked at 80 houses before I chose this one. Each time I looked around and thought I'd have done that slightly differently, and each time I got more ideas on what to do with my place. When I did it up, I spared no expense, everything was the best quality, right down to the light fittings. But two years after buying, I find I'm moving out."

Why the wrench? The journey to work, since the London Wasps moved from Loftus Road, W12 to High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, was getting Lewsey down, so he will be buying a home nearer the club and some lucky person will benefit from his labour of love.

That marathon survey of 80 other houses offered plenty of inspiration on how this 1880s house could to be remodelled to preserve its period style while accommodating 21st century inhabitants. Shortly after buying, Lewsey set to work putting his ideas into practice. "There are lots of small rooms in these houses, and they can be dark and dingy," he says. "I wanted to combine open-plan living with traditional comfort, using modern materials but still preserving period fittings."

The first priority was a spacious kitchen/living area for relaxing and entertaining. The ground floor was a very poky warren, so all the internal walls were taken out to create a daylight zone. An extension was added, made from reclaimed London stocks, with a row of windows set in the ceiling to bathe the area in sunshine. Brickwork and glass were softened with clever lighting: spots in the floor that mellow the rough brick wall in the evening, and more spots scattered across the kitchen ceiling. The room's original fireplace, found in the cellar, was refurbished

and replaced, and the chimney opened up for log fires.

Underfloor heating was added ("very comforting when you come down in your socks in the morning"). A gorgeous solid oak floor, plus a hulking dining table in a toning shade of the same timber, brings extra warmth to the room.

The spacious ground floor and the airy loft conversion that holds two of the four bedrooms are the most visible legacies of 12 months of rebuilding, but there is a great deal of hidden work - the chimney was relined and the plumbing completely renovated.

At the top of his wish list was his beloved bathroom: he turned one of the first-floor bedrooms into a huge en-suite. He explains: "It's important to me to be able to unwind in a hot bath after a day of getting beaten up." The room has a traditional rolltop, cast-iron bath set on an oak pedestal, and is filled with daylight, both from its own windows and filtering through a wall of glass bricks that separates the bathroom from the master bedroom.