hello…
We are not interior designers. This website is not about us predicting trends or telling you how to design your home or which accessories are this season’s “must-haves”. It is about us sharing a very personal journey – one which has made us really think more about design and how it affects the way we now live our lives.
Our current journey started in 2017, when we sold our home in West Didsbury, Manchester. We’d lived in the mid-terraced, three bedroomed house since 2000, but had recently renovated it, creating a very unusual, completely open plan space. This gave us a craving for more space. To be somewhere which didn’t have houses to each side of us and to the back and to the front. To be able to see the sunset, not other roof tops. We took a complete leap of faith and sold the Manchester house, buying a stone house, high up in the hills in northern Istria, Croatia and set off on a very new journey.
We really hit the ground running and from day one, had to get our heads around not only sourcing tradespeople and materials but also considering what we wanted our new home to be like. Underpinning our thought processes, was the constant idea that we wanted to create something which was unique and bespoke – and as far from the traditional interior of an Istrian house as possible. We wanted to get to know our new environment and feel the house and understand the space. We wanted space, light and clean lines. We wanted our style, but we knew it would evolve. It would take time. It would become Slow Design…
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Renovation
Interiors
Lifestyle
Travel
Latest Blogs…
Renovation
honeysuckle success story
Over the past four or five years, we've had mixed success with our three honeysuckle plants. They have been moved around the garden quite a lot, due to some extensive renovation works, and last year, we dug them up out of big wooden planters, where they were supported...
a little bit of art deco design
Our Istrian stone house has not an iota of art deco about it. With a very traditional Mediterranean stone house structure, a Scandi inspired interior and a contemporary exterior, there's nothing at all that hints at this popular design style of the 1920s and 1930s....
repurposing a chimney pot
One of the stranger things we packed into the back of the removal lorry when we came out to Istria, was the large clay, chimney pot which had been removed from the roof of our West Didsbury house, when we were renovating it, because it was redundant. I'm not sure why...
house reno : stairs : update 3
It's been a while since I first posted about the stairs which lead down from our living room, into what we now call The Snug. I'm glad to say that the very dangerous wooden stairs which we inherited have now been completely renovated and made a lot safer in the...
Interiors
la posada del mar : denia : costa blanca
Denia holds some lovely memories for us. Over twenty five years ago, we rented a big villa with a pool and holidayed there with friends. None of us had very much money and a two week holiday was a big outlay, but we had such a great time. We have briefly re-visited...
rattan
Our thoughts are beginning to really turn to what could be a whole new life for us. Although we are not over the line yet, we are as close as we have been to selling our home in Istria and relocating to Andalucia. It's close, but at the same time, until the ink has...
minimalist colour palette
We've been working on the process of stripping back the colours in our home, for the last year. Our initial colour choices were quite bold - deep navy, copper, shades of grey. These worked well for us, and created a real warmth in our stone house. However, what you...
winter mornings…
Our bedroom is by far the largest room in the house, and could definitely accommodate an en-suite. We've thought about this addition so many times, but it's always seemed a bit of a luxury, when so many other more pressing projects have demanded attention. We also...
Lifestyle
splashes of colour…
Currently, most of what we own is in a storage unit, back in Istria, and we are travelling light (although the packed car would suggest otherwise), as we move around Andalucia, getting to know the region of our new home. The purchase hasn't completed yet, so we don't...
house hunting : spain : andalucia
Since our house in Istria went on the market in March 2024, after we completed the new garden to the rear of the house and did much internal refurbishment, our minds have been focused on finding our new home. We knew that our Istrian adventure had come to an end. For...
goodbye…doviđenja…arrivederci…
Well, it has happened. On the 8th July, we turned the key in the lock for the final time and said goodbye to our much loved, renovated Istrian stonehouse and our lives for the last seven and a half years. When we put the house up for sale in March, after the...
roasted butter beans
If you are a fan of deliciously creamy butter beans, you might like to try this, if like us, this method of cooking them, has so far passed you by. Roasting. Yes, that's right, roasting then in the oven. And I guarantee, you'll be as in love with this way of doing...
Travel
archidona : malaga province : andalucia
Archidona first came onto our radars when we caught an episode of "A Place In The Sun" and this was the location. Not many places on this TV programme immediately appeal to us, as many are in tourist hot-spots, but Archidona, with its cobbled streets and white washed...
genoa : liguria : italy
Our trip from Istria, all the way down to Andalucia, has been an absolute adventure, revisiting places we've not been to in a long while, and taking in new places we wouldn't necessarily see. Even though we were driving, we decided to cut out the route along the south...
san servolo wellness resort : buje : istria
When the San Servolo resort opened again, post lockdown, it was clear they had been keeping themselves very busy. As well as the Steak House and hotel, it looked as if the company had been expanding the site. Our first trip out, when we were allowed to mix and...
poreč : istria : croatia
When we moved to Istria, we naively thought that our lives would be one long holiday. I mean, that's why people come to Istria in their thousands. To holiday. But we quickly got into a groove of living in Istria permanently, and it became too easy to "live". We still...
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