Couple Discover Tiled Masterpiece Hiding Beneath Carpet in Their 1830s House
A couple uncovered a tiled masterpiece lurking underneath the garish carpet of their 1830s house, which had been hidden for decades.
The new owners, named Kathryn and Phil, purchased a sprawling manor in England, and have been slowly "restoring its Victorian grandeur."
The pair have been sharing the transformation on their TikTok account, and their Instagram page, including what's arguably one of their biggest projects to date.
The 1,200 square foot property—and grounds—has retained what appears to be the original, intricately tiled floor which was covered up for years.
Kathryn discovered the beautiful flooring after innocently deciding to see what lay beneath their red carpet, leading to an extensive two-year restoration project.
Now nearly completed, the pair uploaded a clip on Saturday detailing the painstaking process to date, with the final polish now in sight. They captioned a video: "What was hiding under the red carpet.
"'I'll just take a look under this carpet' were the immortal words from me. Which has now led to a 2 year project to rescue and restore this Maws Tile floor. 100s of hours have been spent chipping, chiselling and scrubbing away at this beautiful floor along with one wall removed and 3 door ways added along the corridor.
"We've come a long way with this section of the house and now I'm finally choosing the décor already for the floor's final clean and polish in a few months time."
The on-screen captions reveal more about the find, saying: "We never expected to find this under the red carpet. Sections of the floor had been covered by self levelling compound. It took us hours to remove it all. This floor had been covered up for years. Then we started cleaning. More tiles were covered with bricked up doorways. We put the doorways back in. Damaged tiles were reset and repaired. Now it is ready for its final clean and polish."
Their Instagram account goes into more detail, as they documented the floor transformation from the moment they found it in 2019.
Alongside a photo of the red carpet, Kathryn wrote: "This is what the Main Hall used to look like—then on Saturday afternoon I decided to pull up the carpet and see what was underneath. 10 minutes later I'm rolling the whole lot up with Dad as we found the tiles. ⠀
"There was a concrete area in front of the double doors. So we thought the tiles were missing. After a lot of research and poking and prodding the walls we uncovered what we thought were the two original doorways.
"And under all of the plaster and brickwork there they were. I think having the new doorways makes the room seem wider. We've also retained the red carpet as we found out it is an Axminster. It's all rolled up as we think we will be able to use sections of it in different rooms around the house. It's looking a bit different to when we moved in."
It's taken a lot of hard work to restore the floor to its former glory, as she estimated they'd been covered up for around 50 years.
"They have been covered over some time before 1950 and it seems as though no effort has been made to preserve them. There is just cement and bricks on top of them," she said in another post.
Restoring the original doorways to uncover the tiles has led to an even bigger project than originally anticipated, but meant they were slowly returning the house to its original state.
Kathryn continued: "The dust is still settling after yesterday as work began to reinstate the floor plan for the house back to the 1800s layout. This all started after we found the tiled floor and I wasn't convinced this was the whole pattern and we had wonky edges to the design. ⠀⠀
"After a bit of Instagram encouragement I removed the skirting board from the bowed wall to reveal what looked like more tiles peeking out from under the wall. After a lot more research we decided to commit to removing the wall to unblock what we thought were two doorways and hopefully reveal the patterned Craven Dunnill tiles. ⠀⠀
"The modern edition of the large door frame was removed along with a lot of the brick work that was forcing the wall to not be straight and tah dah. We are left with a giant whole in the side of the house.
"These poor tiles have been covered over with bricks and cement for over 60 years and now they can finally be revealed again. They are in surprisingly good condition and I am still amazed they were here underneath all of that wall. ⠀
"This floor has led us to do a lot of jobs we never initially intended doing and now we have even resorted to removing walls to find the rest of the floor. We didn't even know it was even here when we bought the house and now it's definitely writing its own new chapter in the house's history."
After a lot of hard work the owners described the entrance hall as the showstopper of the house, which is far from complete.
They added: "Our tiled floor is one of the show stoppers of the house. But it didn't look quite like it does now.....in its current dusty state.
"When we uncovered the floor in 2019—it really was in a bad shape. Gripper rods, glued and nailed and even screwed into the tiles. Areas covered in paint and the top area was completely covered in self levelling compound. We spent weeks cleaning off the worst on the floor and the next 12 months uncovering the rest of the design encased in the walls, with the blocked up doorways.
"Luckily for this floor we love it and it won't be covered up again in our lifetime. Even though I'm not sure if my finger nails will ever recover but now it's just covered with a bit of dust from the general work going on in the house."
Their TikTok video has amassed more than six million views alone, as people were blown away by the discovery.
Commenting on the find, Gribrelate wrote: "That floor is such a gem of a discovery! Love it."
And Its__a__wonderful__life wrote: "That's absolutely amazing especially as the tiles are in such good order."
While Victorianbythebay raved: "O. M. G. I'm dying that someone would cover this up. It's extraordinarily beautiful."
Newsweek reached out to Kathryn and Phil for comment.
