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…
Renovation
Interiors
Lifestyle
Travel
Latest Blogs…
An Anniversary…
Sunday 16th October 2016 saw us meeting up with the couple who we were buying our Istrian home from, and staying over in the house. With hindsight, all a bit bizarre. But then, not much about this adventure has been normal, so I guess we started off as we were meant...
Best Purchase of the Summer…
For quite a while now I've been longing for one of these chairs. But, the garden has never been quite finished, so the idea of swinging gently, whilst sipping a cocktail, seemed ridiculous. We had far too much else to do, to get the outside areas ship-shape, before I...
San Servolo Pizzeria, Buje, Istria
San Servolo is a well renowned independent craft brewery in Buje, in northern Istria, producing excellent beers and pale ales. I'm not a beer fan, but have been known to have a bottle or two of the gorgeous red beer, so that's a recommendation in itself. As well as...
Vatican Museums : Rome : Italy
The Vatican Museums are the public museums of the Vatican City, displaying works of art amassed by the Catholic Church and papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the most renowned Roman sculptures and some of the most important Renaissance artwork in...
Changing Our View…
Coming up to three years ago, we were very excited when one of the tumble down, abandoned houses beyond our property was demolished and heavy machinery arrived in the village. We were even more excited at the prospect of the neighbour building a new house, in the...
Six Years On…
Looking back over photos taken when we came out to view the house in Istria, and stay over as guests of the owners, has been a real experience. I can remember, obviously, what condition the house and garden was in - pretty awful, to be...
irregular crockery
Our renovated kitchen is small, but with everything we need, and is painted in a soft grey to maximise the feeling of space. Worktops are kept largely clear of clutter, again to ensure that we don't feel hemmed in. We carefully worked on the design of the room, to...
Hotel Heritage : Ljubljana : Slovenia
According to the website, the recently renovated Heritage Hotel is... ...one of Ljubljana’s finest boutique hotels. It combines the rich cultural heritage of a Renaissance bourgeois building from the 16th century with the luxury of modern architecture and the prestige...
Small Steps…
Over the summer, when we were averaging two or three house viewings a week and had some very serious interest in the house, if someone had told me that by October, we'd have taken it off the market, given up on The Printworks (and in the process, lost a lot of money)...
Les Jardins de Villa Maroc, Essaouira
It’s always great having friends in-the-know when you travel abroad, as they often give you top tips that you don’t find in guide-books or through internet searches. Because usually you don’t know about these places and so don’t search on...
Autumn in the Garden
Although it seems like no time since the long, heady days of summer, we're well into October now and only a week away from the clocks going back an hour. Usually, we've had the wood-burner lit by now, and our logs delivered. But not this year. Since early April, we've...
Puglia : Italy
Living now in Istria, the tiny heart shaped peninsula, right up in the north of Croatia - bordering Slovenia, close to Trieste and across the Adriatic from Venice - we are very lucky that we can now travel to Italy very easily. Muggia is our closest Italian town, and...
Defining Boundaries
If there is just one thing we have learned from the journey of selling our renovated house in Istria, it's that boundaries are number one priority for nearly every potential purchaser. To the point of obsession. Even before getting into the house, the questions asked...
Lluna Aqua Hotel : Sóller : Mallorca
When we last visited Mallorca, one of the hotels we booked was the Lluna Aqua Hotel in Sóller. Housed in a traditional Mallorcan townhouse, which we were told had been empty for over eighty years, the renovation had only recently been...
British Corner Shop
We're not short of places to buy food here. Istria is stuffed to the gills with supermarkets - Lidl, Spar. Kaufland, Konzum, Studenac, Eurospin, Tomy, Plodine, Butiga Ultra. They come in all shapes and sizes from the small convenience store (think Tesco Express) to...
sperlonga : latina : italy
We’d not previously heard of this place, but now we know about it, it’s very definitely somewhere we’d revisit next time we’re in the province of Latina. Halfway between Rome and Naples, the very pretty village, perched high on a hilltop overlooking the sea, is a...