Inside a fully renovated 19th-century farmhouse
Released on 03/24/2023
[footsteps thumping]
[bright jazz music]
The house is an old farmhouse
which was built in the mid 19th century.
As we took over, it was still a working farmhouse
and needed quite a bit of work done
for us to sort of live in a make a family house.
We spent about a year renovating it.
There's multiple rooms dotted around the house
and we sort of removed a couple of walls here and there
to really...
[footsteps clacking]
Sorry.
[bright jazz music]
Working together was interesting.
[James chuckles]
We agreed on a lot of things,
some things we had to compromise on,
but we both had the thought process
that we wanted it to be a family home.
One of us lost one battle and won the other.
[Scarlett] We wanted it to be quite a clean space
that we could layer with antiques and textiles
and all of James's beautiful pieces in his collection.
I tried to add in a bit more color,
you know, that was the tone throughout the designs.
[bright jazz music]
We are currently in the family sitting room.
It used to be split to two rooms.
So where I'm standing was the old hallway.
That would've been the front door originally
and there was a wall across here.
Again, because of the ceiling height,
we wanted to open up and create a bigger family space.
We've kept the beautiful slate flooring.
There was a very small fireplace at the front
and we wanted to open that
and be very much the center of the space.
We had a sofa made from the First Furniture collection.
Everything else fell into place around that.
We've been chopping and changing pieces ever since.
This piece was from our honeymoon and we bought in Kyoto
and it's a 19th century city workers kimono.
We didn't have any idea what we do with it
when we bought it, but we loved the colors
and the textures and the sort of the faded feel.
One of my favorite pieces in the house
is this early 19th century desk.
I bought it in the South of France on a bind trip,
where It did have and still has traces of the red paint.
We've come a kept as much as that as possible.
The walnut is incredibly beautiful and really rich.
[bright jazz music]
So we layered lots of different types of textiles
throughout the house.
We've got antique saddlebags draped on the back of chairs
and just things that we've collected together over time,
antique cushions.
On the window seat, we've got some Indian motif prints.
The actual window seat is a fabric that I designed.
It's part of a collection for Aldridge & Supple.
And it's just really lovely and faded
and inspired by a Japanese fragment
that we found on our honeymoon.
So it's just layering it with really sentimental
but different types of textures and prints.
The curtains are actually lovely old French linen sheets
that we've collected over time
and we made them into curtains throughout the house.
We quite like them being clean and not too fussy and heavy.
I love the way that linen hangs, it's really relaxed.
[bright jazz music]
This is what we call the winter sitting room.
It's the darkest room in the house.
We have east facing small window.
Because of that, we wanted to make it very snug.
So we've painted it a darkish blue-green
and very much sort of focused around the fireplace.
The room itself, in terms of the size
has stayed very similar.
The parquet flooring, we've kept.
And we actually quite like the exposed brick,
so we've kept it primarily 'cause we're slightly lazy
but we do actually like the look of it.
[bright jazz music]
This is the room we spend most of the time.
And the table in particular is my top five pieces,
few pieces I bought specifically for the house
similar region to the cabinet.
So the size obviously, works really well for this space,
the proportions of it but also the wear, the patina
and the sort of the aging of it, the richness of the color,
the movement of the wood, we particularly love.
One of the things we wanted to do
was to elevate the fireplace.
You could see it from all parts of the room
and we wanted it to be a real feature
and focal point of of the space and add theater to the area.
The Catalaunian cabinet,
which is likely from the Pyrenees Mountains
is one of my, I think my favorite piece.
I fell in love with the simplicity, the patina,
and just the concept of it being 3, 400 years old
and yet seemingly perfect in a contemporary setting.
We found this lovely red oven
while we were restoring the house
and we decided to keep it and make a lovely feature of it.
So it's actually a drinks cabinet and we added these doors
using the same reclaimed timber from the island.
My favorite room in the house is the kitchen.
It's where we spend all of our time.
We opened it up so that it connects with the dining space
and it's really lovely when we have friends over
because you're talking or cooking
and everyone either gathers around the island
or is in the sitting area by the fire.
The kitchen drawer that we wanted to keep it
really simple, really minimal.
There's not much ceiling height,
we didn't want have too much going on in the walls
and so everything predominantly is low level.
[Scarlett] The color of the units took a really long-
Oh, yeah, that was the hardest
paint color to choose, yeah. Time to find.
We went through hundreds of samples
but it's an invisible green which is like an army green,
which we love.
The AGA is a '70s which we had repurposed
and runs through electrics,
which on a practical note is amazing
'cause when we pop away, we just switch off
and then back on again when we come back.
This is my favorite piece of joinery
that James actually designed and it's just really beautiful
and you can do anything to it.
And the more you do to it, the better it actually looks.
So the island actually came from leftover wood
when we were designing the bar at the pub
at The Bradley Hare.
We were using sort of 18th century barnwood
and we had a bit leftover.
We thought it'd be quite nice bringing some sort of timber,
a bit of contrast to the brand new units
and also just the practicality of using a worktop,
it's a built-in worktop essentially.
We wanted to open it up
and not be sort of solid to the ground.
Again, because it's not a huge space
by sort of opening it up, it's gives it a bit more air.
[bright jazz music]
The house has four and a half bedrooms.
This being one of the larger ones.
There is a much larger bedroom,
but we actually prefer the coziness
and the snug feeling of this room.
In terms of what we've done with it,
we've added an ensuite, which was previously a corridor
and reconfigured the entry slightly.
For the most parts,
such as the timber flooring and the fireplace,
we've kept hazard.
The fabric of the headboard came from Scarlett's friend
and business partner, Saffron Aldridge.
And yeah, very sweetly, it would've given around 10 meters
which was just enough to make this beautiful bed.
The wall colors, this is actually bone iron ball color
which in different lights looks completely different.
It can look slightly sort of brownness,
sometimes slightly greener.
It's a warm, relatively neutral color
which sort of works with a lot of different tones.
[bright jazz music]
One of the really special things about being here
is just being able to take a break from work.
[Scarlett] We both have studios based in London,
so it's a bit tricky at the moment
to spend too much time here
but we love the balance and feel really lucky
that we can be in London and escape here.
[bright jazz music]
Starring: James Thurstan Waterworth, Scarlett Supple
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