The Wall Street Journal-20080201-WEEKEND JOURNAL- The Home Front- House of the Week - Looking Over London

Return to: The_Wall_Street_Journal-20080201

WEEKEND JOURNAL; The Home Front: House of the Week / Looking Over London

Full Text (198  words)

What: Zen minimalist penthouse loft of 4,300 square feet, with two bedrooms and one bathroom

Where: London

Amenities: Roof terrace of 1,000 square feet, some 25-foot ceilings, laundry room, two reserved parking spaces, city views, location in a gated development

Asking Price: GBP 5 million ($9.95 million)

Listing Agents: Lucy Russell of Quintessentially Estates, [email protected], +44 (0)845-2243-658, and Thomas Schulz of Aldine Honey & Co., [email protected], +44 (0)207- 834-4901

Due Diligence: Kelly Hoppen, a British designer with collections by Century Furniture and bed-linen company Sferra, bought this apartment in a former Victorian school about two years ago. She wrote about her subsequent redesign in her book "Kelly Hoppen Home." Near Battersea Park and the river Thames in south London, the apartment's central focus is a 75-foot-long open-plan living, dining and kitchen area with a peaked double-height ceiling. Ms. Hoppen ebonized the original wood floors, put a fitness room where the kitchen had been and added a spiral staircase leading to a mezzanine den. The apartment's only flaw, she says in her book, "is that I should have allowed for a much bigger table in the kitchen, because kitchens are now where we all prefer to live and eat."