It looks like a normal suburban semi, but it hides a magical secret. Spoiler: they don’t have a kid living in a cupboard under the stairs, don’t worry.
A Potter-mad mum has spent 18 months and over £13,000 transforming the dining room of the family home in Shrewsbury, into a mini-replica of the Hogwarts dining hall.
Thirty-one-year-old Charlotte Kyriakou started the unusual renovation project after being left spellbound following a trip to the Harry Potter Warner Bros studios.
And the whole family – including husband Andrew, 39, and kids Eleni, three, Max, four and Kiri, six – have fallen in love with the makeover.
(L-R) Eleni Kyriakou (3), Kyriacos Kyriakou (6) and Maximus Kyriakou (4) read their favourite Harry Potter books with their wands in their Great Hall dining room (Picture: Caters)
‘We’re all pretty obsessed with Harry Potter as a family, Charlotte admits. ‘We went down to London to go to the studios, and we thought “Why can’t we do this at home?”‘.
They just had to relocate the lounge to another part of the house first. No big deal.
They then spent over a year sourcing the materials – even getting hold of original props from the film – and did all the work themselves to create a miniature version of the great Hogwarts dining hall.
Where the money went:
- Limestone floor = £4,000
- Fake stone walls = £3,500
- Table and chairs = £2,000
- Log burner = £2,000
- Witch in dome prop = £350
- Letter prop = £200
- Suit of arms = £200
- iPad = £219
- Trunks = £200
- Flags = £60
- Crest above log burner = £50
- Robes from Sainsbury’s = £41.97
- Sorting hat = £26.95
- Hedwig = £25.95
- Wands = £80.85
- Dobby = £50
Total = 13,004.72
‘My husband did the wooden panels himself, and then ever since we decided we wanted to do it we have been collecting odd bits and bobs from antique shops,’ Charlotte said. ‘We have a lot of replica props and two original props from the films.
‘We have one of the letters thrown through the fire place which we bought from a dealer, which cost us about £200. We also have a witch in a jar which was from Professor Lupin’s office in the third film. That cost £350.’
They even mounted an iPad on the wall and loaded it with moving images of the children riding broomsticks – just like the Hogwarts’ portraits which are able to talk and move.
If you’re thinking ‘they probably have great dinner parties,’ then you’d be right. ‘We hosted a Halloween party here last year and I tried to make it look like a banquet,’ Charlotte recalls. ‘I made a chocolate frog cheesecake with the Hogwarts crest in the middle.
‘We had a Christmas dinner in here and managed to get 22 people in with the extra table from the kitchen. We love it. ‘
In total, the transformation cost them just over £13,000 and Charlotte admits they are not going to be moving anytime soon.
‘Blood, sweat and tears have gone into this room,’ she said. ‘I did suggest to Andrew that we could do with an extra bedroom, but we can’t move and leave that room. I don’t know what we’d do.’
Perhaps using the cupboard under the stairs as an extra bedroom isn’t such a bad idea after all...