Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Dan Martensen had to stop watching FX restaurant drama The Bear in its second season. It was too close to home for the fashion and portrait photographer turned restaurateur, and founder of It’s Bagels!, a London chain of New York-style bagel bakeries, which has recently opened its third branch. The first, in Primrose Hill, was launched while New York-born Martensen and his British wife, fashion stylist Clare Richardson, founder of secondary clothing retailer Reluxe, were in the midst of renovating their north-west London house. “Construction was coinciding with me building a bagel shop for the very first time,” says Martensen. “Even if you’ve opened a hundred restaurants it’s a stressful experience. I was going from one building site to another, barely sleeping.” He can laugh about it now. “We were living a twilight zone version of The Bear.” Today, the family-centred home, with its kitchen and dining room looking out through large oak-framed windows on to a green lawn and crimson-leafed trees, reveals none of the drama Martensen has been describing — even if Kipper, the family’s eight-month-old puppy, has just escaped into a neighbouring abandoned garden. “Even before we’d done the renovation, it felt like a family home,” says Richardson, whose childhood was spent in Korea and Japan before her family returned to England. “It always felt solid, with a sense of calm.”After nine years of living in New York, those were the qualities that the couple, who have two children aged 8 and 5, were longing for. In 2019, they left behind their most recent renovation — a brownstone in Brooklyn — to move here. “After buying it, renovating it and pouring our hearts into it and living in it for a year, I decided I needed to go home,” says Richardson. “I was terribly homesick. And neither one of us, myself especially, ever planned or wanted to raise a child in Brooklyn.” “New York is London times two,” says Martensen. “More busy, more crazy, more expensive. In London you don’t feel that same urgency to get out of the city. That’s probably because you wouldn’t be able to get this size of house or this size of garden in New York.”They were renting in London when Martensen found the detached five-bedroom house, built in 1889, on a wide and leafy residential street in a conservation area on the border of Kilburn. “We knew this area had comparable prices to Queen’s Park for a house twice the size and a garden twice the size,” says Martensen. The previous owners had lived there for 30 years and had taken good care of it. Martensen was captivated by its well-preserved original features: moulded ceilings; wood panelling; the entrance hall’s black and white tile floor and a staircase that twists through the centre of the house’s three storeys. There are eight original fireplaces — the one in the hallway is Martensen’s favourite. “I imagine it was for boot drying, after you came in from a long walk,” he says.The couple initially thought there wasn’t much work to be done. “This is the third property we’ve renovated [they also own a home in upstate New York] and we’d convinced ourselves, as we always do, that it was a cosmetic renovation,” says Martensen. “Then when the previous owners moved out all their furniture, we got to see its bare bones and that’s when I thought, oh,” says Richardson. “There was far more work needed but our main aim remained to keep as many of those features as possible.”They employed the services of interior architect Anthi Grapsa, formerly of architectural salvage and interior design company Retrouvius, and an expert in building with reclaimed materials. There was a certain amount of structural reconfiguring to be done, including a new extension and flowing the sitting room into the dining area and kitchen. With its range cooker and American-sized fridge, it’s a high-functioning space for the family’s exacting chef.Martensen studied photography at the Rhode Island School of Design and his work has been featured in publications including i-D, Self Service, and Vogue, but he had always loved cooking. Grounded and bored during the pandemic, he had the idea of starting an authentic New York bagel restaurant . And this, the realisation of a long-held dream, spilled into the house redesign.“This was definitely Dan’s project,” says Richardson of the kitchen. “He comes from a family obsessed with food. They sit down to a meal and all they talk about is food!” The chequered tiled floor in dark green and terracotta was inspired by the entrance of the restaurant Chiltern Firehouse. Martensen is proud of the two mid-century-style modular speakers from Ojas that he self-assembled. The brand is owned by a friend and they also feature in all of his restaurants. Throughout the house, elegant touches of dark wood and mid-century-inspired furniture and lighting work well alongside the Victorian detailing, softened through the use of neutral paintwork and wall coverings such as the sandy grasscloth paper by Osborne & Little on the stairs and landings. “We wanted to pare it all back so there was a feeling of calm,” says Richardson. The sense of sanctuary that the house is providing has become even more important as work commitments continue to grow for the couple. Richardson, who founded Reluxe in 2022, has recently expanded into the US and has a growing clientele. The brand currently has a pop-up shop on Golborne Road and she is looking for a permanent retail site in London. Meanwhile, just over a year after opening the first location, It’s Bagels! has proven so popular that Martensen is already planning a fourth site. Given that Richardson’s fashion business philosophy is reuse, the emphasis in the house echoes this. Furniture includes pieces from the Brooklyn house, second-hand finds from Vinterior, including a 1950s ceiling light, and a sofa donated by a friend, reupholstered in green corduroy from Portobello Road’s The Cloth Shop. There are more pieces to find and more art to put up, “but we don’t want to shop for furniture”, says Martensen. “We prefer for it to all come together over time.”Upstairs, a family bathroom is cheerfully tiled in a blue striped design from Otto Tiles. On the floor above, two bedrooms have been turned into the master bedroom and en suite, separated by bespoke wardrobes. It’s a calming retreat, with a claw-foot bath, reclaimed floor boards used as panelling that lend a little upstate cabin chic, and a dark green tiled shower and steam room. “We had a showdown about that,” says Richardson. “I didn’t approve.” This was largely because Martensen had a track record with bathrooms. “In the last house I insisted on a bidet and the first day it was installed my daughter used it as a water fountain. I never touched it again.” The steam room, though, Martensen maintains, is “the greatest thing” he’s ever done. “On winter nights, you put the kids down and you come in here, and it’s like 1,000 degrees,” he says. “It’s fantastic.”Home is London now, for sure. “Even if I could snap my fingers and all the logistical stuff — the moving, the expenses and the paperwork were all done for us — I wouldn’t move back [to New York],” says Martensen. “I’m really happy here and a big part of that is because my family is happy here.” The drama then has been worth it.Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
