My house: Alexandra Jefford, jewellery designer

I fell in love with our house a year before we moved in. I forced my poor husband to leave his beloved Chelsea, mainly because I wanted my daughter to be able to walk to school, and this place in Parson’s Green was the first we visited. I walked in the door, thought “this is it” and immediately put in an offer. We got gazumped, but it came back on the market a year later – at 25 per cent more than the original price. A bummer, but we loved it, so we went for it.

 

The picture above is of our bedroom, which we’ve just re-done. The light is really nice; the sun comes right through and it’s lovely to sit after dinner, reading a book. My husband, Hossein Amini, is a screenwriter [he wrote Drive] and film director [The Two Faces of January], so the shelves contain his DVD collection.

 

You can also see a white Yngve Ekström armchair from the 50s, a period of design that I love. I bought it in Paris from a Danish design antique shop and ended up upholstering it myself, which took about 15 hours. I started early in the morning and finished about 2am. I broke every nail, but I’m proud of how it turned out.

 

Parson’s Green is very green, and very family orientated. It’s quiet, apart from when Chelsea play (we’re on the other side of the park to Stamford Bridge), but it’s changed a lot over the years. When we arrived 14 years ago there was one deli and a hairdresser, now there’s a Space NK, a Japanese restaurant, a smoothie place.

 

We loved the house because it’s got enough space for my husband and I to work from home. The first thing we did was convert the garage into an office for him. He writes there in the mornings and watches films in the afternoon. I have a studio at home on the top floor and do all my painting up there. I’m a jewellery designer by trade but I trained as an artist and I still work in the studio upstairs. It’s gorgeous, a great space for making art.