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.
We also design beautiful websites. Check us out here…
Renovation
Interiors
Lifestyle
Travel
Latest Blogs…
Renovation
the restoration of our front doors…
...deserve a post of their very own. They are now the most beautiful doors, but it's taken a real labour of love, because when we bought the house, they definitely weren't beautiful. In fact, they looked so awful and dilapidated that the intention was to have them...
renovation lessons
Our Istrian renovation, looking back now, wasn't really a renovation. It was a series of jobs (some quite big, so we're not underestimating what was done) carried out by different people, with differing levels of availability and skills. All of the work was carried...
crittal doors and crittal windows
I've long dreamed of crittal doors in our house, but it's never been a reality before. With hindsight, when we renovated our house in West Didsbury, we should have investigated these metal doors more thoroughly, because as much as we loved our hardwood French doors, I...
andalucian reno journey #4 : main bathroom
It's been a while since I've done a post about our renovation journey, because we've so busy since actually moving into the house - at long last! - on 26th August. The builders finally departed a week later (but will be returning to finish the kitchen), so we've been...
Interiors
it’s all in the details…
Sometimes, it's the smallest details that make a house feel like yours. When we began renovating our old Andalucian townhouse, there were certain things we knew we wanted to retain, certain things we wanted to change, and a few things we simply weren't prepared to...
meet my new favourite little gadget
There’s something very satisfying about a piece of tech that works well and looks good enough to leave on display. This compact projector from CREATE (create-store.com) manages to do both — and at a surprisingly accessible price point. I was initially drawn to the...
upcycled wardrobe
There weren't many original pieces of furniture left in our house when we bought it. Plenty of 1980s stuff, mind you, that the previous owner obviously no longer wanted, and couldn't be bothered to get rid of. No, we weren't lucky enough to be purchasing one...
ikea krusning pendants
Lighting - and pendants - have been a big consideration in the renovation of our house. Initially, we'd thought that we'd go down the route of Moroccan/Moorish style pendants, but to get what we wanted, for all of the rooms, would have cost a small fortune. So, we...
Lifestyle
jamie oliver squash laksa soup
As summer has passed, so too have overly summery dinners. Gone are the cool, green salads and light dishes and in come the more hearty recipes. We're finding that our meals are slowly becoming more on the spicy, punchy side, as we prepare for the onset of colder...
a week in the life of… #2
After several weeks in which life seemed determined to provide us with enough material for a small novel, things have been a little quieter. Relatively speaking. The working week has been a busy one, with websites being launched, others nearing completion and a few...
starlink : return to sender
There’s a particular optimism attached to the arrival of a new piece of technology. Here, in this box, might be the answer. A small investment of time setting it up, and one less thing to worry about. Sometimes, that optimism survives the unpacking. And sometimes, it...
a week in the life of… #1
...our Andalucian Life. Covering the things that happen. The things we notice. A week in our lives. Another week in our little corner of Andalucía. Another seven days in which we've managed to experience the ridiculous, the frustrating, the occasionally bewildering...
Travel
la fonda heritage hotel, marbella : a very special stay in the old town
Beautifully restored architecture, peaceful courtyards and a little understated luxury in the heart of Marbella's old town. Marbella is a place that can conjure up all sorts of images, not all of them particularly appealing to us. But its old town is another story...
le royal hôtel, nîmes : a boutique hotel, roman history & spectacularly bad timing
An unexpectedly lovely hotel overlooking Place d'Assas, in a French city we knew very little about. If only we'd arrived a couple of days earlier... One of the loveliest things about our late summer road trip through France was discovering places we knew very little...
from genoa to barcelona : a little chaos, an overnight ferry and a new beginning
Driving through Liguria, an overnight stay in Genoa and a ferry crossing to Barcelona. The next stage of our journey from Istria to Andalucía turned out to be rather more memorable than we'd anticipated. Our journey from Istria to Andalucía was turning into quite an...
one night in estepona
Recently, we were lucky to be able to escape the chaos of our renovation and have a night in Estepona, where we met an old Manchester friend, who was out visiting family. We'd only drive around Estepona before, and had only really seen any of it, on programmes like "A...
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