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…
And now, some seven years later, it’s all happening again. We’ve sold our home in Istria and have brought our Slow Design philosophy to southern Andalucia, where we have bought a traditional Spanish townhouse. The slow renovation begins again.
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Renovation
Interiors
Lifestyle
Travel
Latest Blogs…
Renovation
andalucian reno journey #1
The renovation - well, I say *renovation*, but what I really mean is demolition - started in earnest a few weeks ago. We are very lucky that we've bagged ourselves a gorgeous apartment to rent, in a lovely western coastal town called Sanlucar de Barrameda, meaning...
our initial advice when buying abroad
Finally, work has started in the house. We visited last week and arrived to the sound of chiselling and hammering as years of plaster was starting to be removed from the walls of the rooms on the first floor. The downstairs rooms were filling up with scaffolding and...
our renovation learning : #1
Although we have renovated houses before, this seems a very different renovation. In our very first house, we did change it a lot, but we did nothing structural. Mostly, it seemed to be constant decorating and moving things around, which we did ourselves. When we sold...
the start of something new…
Although it still feels as if we are on a very extended holiday here in Andalucia, and will be returning to Istria and our stone house, we're going to soon realise that this is not the case. We actually completed on the Spanish house in October, but have only visited...
Interiors
hostal aljibe : archidona : andalucia
Sometimes, you find somewhere to stay, that is just so exceptionally beautiful, you spend your whole stay, drinking in the interiors, the exterior, the accessories and accessorisation, and just well, the whole thing. On our roadtrip across Spain, we've been so lucky...
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...
Lifestyle
reducing the plastic : hello ecofiltro
Over the years we've been finding that, especially over the summer, our use of plastic water bottles increases significantly. We always recycle plastics, but we were creating our own small mountain of bottles and often our plastics bin (which was only collected every...
benvenuti winery : kaldir : istria
"Three generations of a family on a mission to preserve the traditional grape varieties and the wine culture of Istria and Motovun..." So says the website of the Benvenuti Winery, located about 20 minutes away from where we used to live in Istria. And, if there's one...
cooking : air fryer style
Since we bought our air fryer in the New Year, we've noticed that we are definitely using the conventional oven much less. It's been used maybe three or four times, if that, and if we were in our home, I'm sure we'd noticed a reduction in energy consumption. However,...
mi smart air fryer : 3.5l
We've considered an air fryer for a while, but haven't done anything about acquiring one, as we thought they might be a bit gimmicky. Used a couple of times and then put back in the box and pushed to the far recesses of the cupboard. Only to be got out again when we...
Travel
medina sidonia : andalucia
Before we started researching areas, as possible places to buy a property and relocate to, I don't think we'd heard of Medina Sidonia before. However, the name resonated with us, creating visions of Moroccan medinas. Deep in the south west of Andalucia, the town is...
hotel la almoraima : castellar de la frontera : andalusia
We're now increasingly finding that we need to be a bit more hands on with the house renovation, and need to factor in time to get across to Jimena de la Frontera to meet with Jose, the project manager, more often. Or be in San Roque where all of the house...
punta paloma dunes : tarifa : andalucia
The shifting dunes of the south western coast of Andalucia, really are a sight to behold, perhaps the most dramatic being those located at Punta Paloma, the headland just to the north of Tarifa, separating the expansive beaches of Tarifa from those of Bolonia. The...
smartr malaga centro
For a short stay in Malaga, we recently discovered a really good company, offering fully renovated apartments in the center of the city, located on Calle Santa Lucia, in one of the city's most vibrant areas. The accommodation, in a recently renovated townhouse,...
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