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
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...
villa cesare : savudrija : istria
A little bit of a different renovation tale today. One that is slightly more ambitious than the one we have embarked upon! When we're out and about in Istria, we often stumble upon what we think are hidden treasures. Things that we think only we know about. Istria is...
Interiors
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...
quick bathroom makeover
We've spent so long focusing on other areas of the house, and in particular this summer, the garden, that we've neglected a couple of rooms. One being the upstairs bathroom. We rarely use it these days, preferring the walk in shower in the downstairs renovated...
concrete table
When we lived in West Didsbury, we renovated our three bedroom terraced house, knocking down internal walls, and eventually creating a very contemporary, open plan home, which included a large L-shaped concrete bench, with storage underneath. When we bought our house...
Lifestyle
garden table upcycle
We have an old, rustic wooden table, which we brought out to Istria with us. It used to be a work table, so was stained with oil drops, paint splashes and cuts in the wood. We used it originally, once cleaned up, as a work desk, as being quite long and thin, could fit...
vappeby bluetooth speaker : ikea
We've had a Bose Soundlink Mini II bluetooth speaker for a good few years now. It's portable, the charge lasts for quite a long time and the sound quality is excellent. It still looks pretty cool after about ten years, so design-wise, it ticks boxes for us. It's small...
velvet bar : zagreb
We have very fond memories of Velvet, on Canal Street, in Manchester, way back in the '90s. Along with bars such as Manto and Metz, these places just seemed to ooze glamour and decadence and opened up a whole new world - definitely a far cry from some of the student...
the start of spring 2024
This winter definitely hasn't felt as long as previous ones we've spent in Istria. When summer ended and family went home after four long, fabulous weeks, we had two autumn visits from friends, when we experienced a really warm October, feeling that summer was still...
Travel
museo mille miglia : brescia
Very recently, we watched the film "Ferrari", based on a family recommendation, because of its locations. We're definitely not car-people and so if not for the Italy connections, we might have by-passed it, but it was actually a great - and in places, shocking -...
salon de provence : bouches-du-rhône : france
Our road trip to France, was semi-planned. We had an idea of certain areas we wanted to visit to see if they could be added to our list of possible places for relocation. So, as we set off for the south-eastern region, we knew we wanted to tick off Beziers,...
centro paolo vi : brescia
We're not religious people by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like a bit of Italian theatrics when it comes to things of a holy nature. I also like a hotel which is a little bit different, and if it comes with free, secure parking - as we're never without a...
l’ancienne boulangerie : caunes-minervois : occitanie
Sometimes you stumble across somewhere that is just too pretty to be real, even when the weather isn't on your side, and instead of being bathed in sunlight, grey clouds and drizzle dominate. On the day we visited Caunes-Minervois, south east of Carcassone, it was one...
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