Decor tips

I tend to work from the floor upwards (well, the floor is rather important!). Floor choices include natural stone (hardwearing, attractive and reasonably easy to maintain and clean, but a bit more likely to stain than ceramic tiles, and one of the more expensive options), ceramic tiles, which don’t have quite the same character as natural stone but are pretty much bulletproof and are generally cheaper, and terracotta (very distinctive, which can sometimes become a problem, plus they can chip quite easily).

Then there’s wood flooring, which is obviously not as hardwearing as stone and ceramics, but is perhaps nicer to stand on (would not recommend for a farmhouse kitchen with resident Labradors, sheep etc though!). Engineered wood flooring is a better choice for underfloor heating or damp areas, but it tends to be more uniform than solid wood. Lino, which is essentially a natural material, has made quite a comeback and is available in a huge range of patterns and colours, and is of course easy to clean and pleasant underfoot. Vinyl tiles offer another choice, as does natural rubber.

Whatever you use I suggest that the same floor finish is used throughout the kitchen and any adjacent dining or living areas, perhaps using rugs to soften these spaces, rather than using a combination of finishes.

With the advent of washable modern paints its no longer necessary to use wall tiles, which I personally am not very fond of as they can give the kitchen an institutional feel, and once installed its not easy to alter the décor in the future. They are of course a good choice behind cookers and hobs, although other alternatives for these areas include backpainted glass (easy to clean and unobtrusive if painted the same colour as the wall), stainless steel (practical but not so easy to clean), and patinated zinc.

When choosing floor and wall finishes its obviously important to consider the kitchen furniture and surfaces. For instance I wouldn’t recommend combining an oak kitchen with natural oak flooring as the overall effect would become too, well woody! Some contrast between horizontal and vertical floor and surface finishes adds texture and contributes to a feeling of space.

Sustainability

Frankly the world seems to have started catching up with us. We have been quietly running one of the most sustainable, low carbon operations for years without mentioning it.

We use just about the only resource that actually renews itself, namely timber. It captures carbon, so that's a good thing. Its unlikely to release it, at least not for a long time, as everything we make is designed to last for generations. I know of only one kitchen that's no longer around, and that's because they removed the house, and we have been making things for over 30 years.

Most of our heavy machinery was made the same way and some is years old (several machines are pre-war, but still work perfectly). My team use traditional hand tools, again some of them Victorian (the tools, not the team).

And I run a Landrover on LPG, which is one of the cleanest fuels around and pretty abundant, and though its twelve years old because its largely aluminium and was pretty well made to start off with I have no plans to replace it any time soon (bear in mind that a big chunk of a vehicles energy and carbon budget arises from its manufacture). I live and work in the same place, so at least I don't travel to work, and as we are a local business with a local workforce some of my team come by bicycle and the others have hardly any distance to travel.

I invested in admittedly expensive Viking gas ranges and a good quality fridge and other appliances, all of which are now over twenty years old and should continue to work for years to come (slight issue over fridges power consumption, but again the energy consumed manufacturing a replacement offsets this).

We operate a buy local policy where we can, which means materials and supplies don't have to to travel very far. Nothing goes into landfill. We burn our woodwaste and will be using it to heat our workshops soon. If we have to use packaging we choose cardboard, but generally we protect our furniture when delivering it using re-usable blankets. Unfortunately suppliers do use plastic packaging, but we recycle this where we can. Aren't we wonderful!

There is of course room for improvement. Much of the timber we buy comes from abroad, which sadly is difficult to get around as there just isn't the quality timber of the type we use readily available in the UK. However we are trying to initiate a scheme with local landowners whereby they grown at least some of the timber we would like to use, though this is unlikely to bear fruit (or rather wood) in my lifetime. And I have a dilemma with the finishes we have to use, which aren't exactly natural, though I hope we can work on this. Other things we could be doing include rainwater/foul water harvesting, though most of the water the workshop consumes has been in a kettle. I can't see a way around buying in electricity, sadly, though we do our best to keep consumption as low as possible

However I think it would be hard to imagine a more sustainable operation than ours!

Bespoke furniture

I forget how unique my own house is. Much of the furniture, the kitchen, the bedrooms and bathrooms, indeed the whole layout was designed by me and brought into being by my team (and me too, not very well!). The kitchen table, which has seen many animated dinners and lethal games of donkey grab, was sketched by me twenty years ago and made by Alan.

Alan, the hard (but actually terribly soft) Pompey biker, whose skills were nurtured here, and who screamed off on his Harley following an encounter with the Workshop Ghost (the ghost, a depressed WW2 farmer, was successfully exorcised by a wacky girlfriend a while later. Alan never returned either). My laptop sits on a table also made here, a bit shaky but good for a generation or two.

I forget how special this is. Most furniture is bought ready made, from Ikea or Harrods or Argos. However well made or designed its worlds apart from a piece designed and made specifically for one family, one home, and that with luck and care will pass on down through successive generations.

When Uppark, the lovely 18th centuryMansion, was destroyed by fire in 1989 the fact that much of the furniture and furnishings had been salvaged encouraged the National Trust to restore the house. A house without its own special furniture is nothing. I hope that in some small way we are part of this future cultural heritage.

Planning a kitchen

Creating a new kitchen is a major project, perhaps the most significant and expensive improvement you can make to your house, so it really is worth giving it some very serious thought.

What’s it for? Is it just somewhere to cook, or do you want it be a combination of kitchen and living room, with space for family and friends. Do you have a young family or are you expecting one, in which case you want to be able to keep an eye on the kids while keeping them away from all the dangers cooking presents. Interconnected family rooms with wide sliding or folding doors can be great, especially when the children become teenagers and you want to escape from them!

Once you have figured out what the kitchen is for you need to think about what you want to cook on, as apart from being the most essential aspect of a kitchen this has a major impact on the design. I personally like fast, powerful gas hobs and gas ovens, as you would find in most restaurants. Other people swear by Aga’s, which also have their qualities but aren’t so hot when it comes to frying steaks for twenty guests. If you have the room, and the budget, go for both.

If you plump for a gas or electric set up you are now presented with the choice of a freestanding cooker or range, or separate hobs and ovens. This really is a subjective and maybe mainly aesthetic choice; there’s something nice about a traditional style cooker, and its easier to design a kitchen around them, but eye level ovens do reduce back strain. However if you choose a slot in range cooker any smoke from the forgotten joint in the oven will be captured by the extractor.

The other Big Thing in the kitchen is the fridge, mainly because it is Big Thing to incorporate into a design. The two principal types on the market are integrated, which are concealed behind furniture doors, and freestanding. Of the freestanding type probably the most popular these days is the American style side by side fridge freezer, which generally comes with filtered water and automatic icemaker. I personally prefer what is called a top or bottom mount, with the freezer above or below the fridge section, as you then get a wide fridge (but not chilled water).

There are now lots of other specialist appliances available, such as built in steamers, deep fat fryers, griddles, BBQ’s, icemakers and coffee machines, along with portable machines such as ice-cream makers, bread makers, food processors and blenders. You need to figure out what of these you might like to incorporate in your new kitchen. We often create an “appliance garage”, a cabinet that contains all the small portable appliances that you’d use more often if you didn’t have to get on your knees to drag out of a cupboard. In our appliance garage they are already plugged in and ready to use, and can be swiftly put away when not needed.

Once the appliances have been decided and the basic layout of the kitchen has been worked out, the style of the cabinets, and the materials and surfaces need to be considered.

Painted kitchens are either finished by hand on site, or pre-finished in the factory. The latter gives a more individual feel, though is inevitably more costly. Whereas painted finishes tend to deteriorate over time, kitchen furniture made from quality hardwoods such as oak or maple often improve with age.

Mass produced kitchens generally use laminate faced interiors, which are pretty durable and easy to clean, Bespoke kitchens, such as the ones we make, often have veneered hardwood interiors, which add a degree of quality, and are more durable over time. Kitchens at the budget end of the spectrum feature “lay on” foil wrapped doors, whereas bespoke kitchens would generally feature solid “in frame” doors with traditional hinges.

There are lots of different surfaces on the market, from the common and relatively inexpensive postformed laminates to solid granite and hardwood. Again natural materials tend to improve with age, although they may require more maintenance than man made materials. We like to mix and match different natural materials, for instance using teak for draining boards, granite near cooking areas, where hot pans may be used, and other hardwoods for seating areas.

Goodwood Rocks

Just up the road from us lies the Goodwood racecourse, possibly the most beautiful in Britain. Or the world. And tonight I witnessed something extraordinary. After the last race a carefully rehearsed team swiftly laid a dance floor on the sacred turf of the paddock, a huge sound and light system appeared, and Boy George turned the normally staid racegoers into a wild dance crowd. Women with improbable hats from the exclusive enclosures rythmed with tattooed members of the less salubrious. Old sticks, including the recently departed clerk of the course, looked on amazed. Ibiza on champagne and gin and tonics. Beyond us the Isle of Wight floated in the channel, above us the stars.

End of the French odyssey

Well, looks like I've sold the Abbaye at last. Its a bit sad because its a lovely place and we've had some great times there, but restoring a 1,000 year old monastery with maybe a hundred rooms (never quite counted or possibly even saw them all) was seriously daunting. Especially in the current chilly financial climate, which has particularly impacted the owners of dilapidated 1,000 year old Abbey's in Northern France. Or anywhere that matter.

The new owners, apart from being brave and presumably hugely rich (well slightly less rich now) will probably be slightly puzzled by the eclectic interior decor. As we've been using it for photo shoots over the past few years and have left some of the wallpaper and paint finishes in the rooms, Laura Ashley's sedate flower prints and gentle colours fight against Tricia Guilds altogether more startling designs in the Salon. Subdued French grey walls in the stairs hall uncomfortably contain sizzling metallic wallpapers in their 17th century moulded panels. Upstairs one of the creamy crucifix lined corridors has a great splash of deep red paint thrown against the wall for no apparent reason, as if there had been some pagan attack on the old monks.

In fact one of the early Abbots was assassinated nearby, while shaving. The old oak tree from which the assassin launched the fatal crossbolt still stands. And another Abbot, Grimaldi, went on to found a dynasty in Monaco. Oodles of history in a place like this. Saints, miracles, apparitions (one potential buyer had a great fear of ghosts; he had been convinced by the agent that there were none when a huge article appeared in one of the regional newspapers alleging that it was the most haunted Chateau in France. He pulled out of the sale and bought a much inferior chateau nearby, owned by the local government who had been desperate to sell it. I suspect foul play at the highest level).

Every time I walk past Designers Guild on the King's Road the Abbaye winks at me from the window displays. In the past its reminded me of the disintegrating plaster in the seldom visited, almost mythical upper floors, of the little red Fergie tractor sitting rusting in the carriage house, brought at great expense from the UK and sniffily dismissed by Marcel the caretaker who preferred to rent a new one with air conditioning and surround sound to cut the acres and acres of grass. A job we latterly turned over to sheep. Of the enormous task I had taken on. But now I can walk past that Kings Road store and frankly feel relief. I can however lots and lots of advice to anyone brave enough to take on a historic house in France!

Flower Power

Was privileged to meet Donovan, the face of the 60's flower scene, at a tea party in London last week.

I reminded him that I had actually been on his staff when I was 18, having managed to get a job as cabin boy on his fabulous yacht Vagrant in Mallorca. He didn't remember this, which isn't surprising as I don't think that he was actually aware that he actually owned it at the time (it had been bought on his behalf by his manager, Alan Klein of Apple; while I was on board apart from the Klein's George Harrison was also a guest. He rode one of those French Velocette bicycles clean into the sea one night).

Donovan is performing the whole of his iconic album, Sunshine Superman, at the Royal Albert Hall on the 3rd of June, with over 30 musicians. A unique event, and I plan to be there.