Inside The Most Elegant £9,000,000 Apartment in Chelsea

Hello luxury home show! I'm Olga Ashby and I welcome you to our Chelsea Barracks project. Come on in! We're gonna start our tour in this beautiful open-plan living-dining area. It is perfect both for entertaining with your family and hosting. This kitchen is absolutely beautiful and I did love the color of the wood. It is a little bit difficult to work with. It is a tint unexpected so we had to use quite a lot of earthly tones in a color scheme to pick it up. So I do really adore those leather chairs. I'm a very strong believer in using stone in interior. So in this particular room we have four different types of stone but it is all melted together so nicely you will not feel overpowered or anything like this. So we will start with this quartzite waterfall which was already there so I obviously had to work with that. It's quite natural in color and we loved it so we decided it would work amazing with travertine and with another green and beige marble we used in the color scheme. Above the waterfall island we do have those beautiful lights which is a result of my Instagram shopping. I'm not sorry to say it and in the end of the day we all do it, just some people do hide it. Well, Maud and Matineer, a beautiful gallery in Paris, just posted those lights and I grabbed them straight away. I would say they remind me of some Japanese lanterns and I'm a big fan of Asia. They're quite brutalistic and I would call myself a soft brutalist. Have you ever heard about people fighting about who is going to be head of the table? Okay, this is the solution. Yeah, so that is a proper solution. I mean no more fighting, couples can finally sit together or if you're a single one you can have a more traditional sitting on the other side of the table. So one there, two here. I love it. Legs are made of micro cement, that's a material I use quite a lot and again I love it very much for its flexibility. So, so beautiful. It's obviously marble which you can already see. This finish called leather, very natural and it is a pure pleasure to touch. It was brushed to perfection and you can clearly see and feel every single vein. It is very precious to me. I'm a big lover of texture. So I am absolutely obsessed and I'm obsessed with lots of things. So I'm obsessed with vintage markets and I know you do know the addresses of those markets and the best ones are obviously always in Paris but here in London we have Portobello Road. So I would definitely say Portobello Road is the heaven for interior designer who needs little bits and pieces, little artifacts to make the place cozy, homey and much more interesting. So from my latest finds on Portobello Road, these sake glasses. Love them. They are so beautiful, so full of texture. Obviously handmade, you want them handmade. It's the whole sake set I got there. Then I'm very proud of acquiring this beautiful bronze vase. I can turn it around and it's stunning. I can tell you I paid like 130 pounds for it. If you want to repeat it for 130 pounds, have a good luck. Let me know if you managed. And secret weapon of every designer, Zara. So how did I get started in interior design? I just, it was like my second degree. Really my mom hated the idea of me being an interior designer. She said it's not a job. My first degree is marketing, so which was very nice to have a degree in marketing. So now I'm not confused when I'm talking about branding. I would travel the world and study interior design in all the different countries. I would go to Florence, study in Florence. And one day I decided it's a great idea to come to London and take a short-term course in interior design in London in KLC school. Thank you, KLC. It was a great time. While I was studying in KLC, I went out for dinner and met my one and only Mr. Ashby, who for some reason just decided to marry me straight away. And I had to get to London. And while I was thinking, I'll just work in both cities. Nothing can be complicated. There's absolutely no questions asked. I will be very successful in London straight away. Well, no one wanted to give me a job. Not even as a junior interior designer. Everyone would say I'm overqualified. I will steal the clients. So I had absolutely no other way but just to start my own business in London. My first job was the most amazing project of my life. It was a 14 square meter apartment in Fulham. And I had to do it for free because, well, Russia doesn't have interior designers. So I had to prove a point. Yeah. By the way, back in Russia at the same time, I was designing a penthouse, which was then awarded as one of the most beautiful places in Europe. But who cares? Because in London, you have to start from 14 square meters if you're relegated. Yeah. Gotta start fresh. Fresh. Very, very fresh. I have already mentioned I'm a strong believer in stone power. So I decided to carry on the conversation about stone, and in this case, cobalt stones, in a rug. So this rug is my collaboration with Revere Rugs. It is a perfect combination of soft textures and a little bit harsh loop texture. It's done in wool and silk and I really love it. The inspiration for this rug is actually a picture of a cobalt wall I took in one of my Morocco trips. It has a high contrast and you can clearly see the shadows around the cobalt. That's a result of a very harsh Moroccan sun in the midday in Medina. I was absolutely mesmerized when I saw the wall and I thought that's the perfect rug for me. Now we are approaching one of the most favorite pieces in this apartment. Not just because of the size, shape, or texture, but because it swivels. I am very, very playful. I'm very serious, very sarcastic, but I'm very playful as well. So when you have a conversation with your family and you're enjoying it, you just sit in here. When you're tired of them, you just swivel around, have your cup of coffee here, a book, and you enjoy people watching and the view is stunning. Another bit of advice. I'm very big on research. It is very annoying to certain people, but I think my clients are enjoying it. Research shows your brain cannot really comprehend if the plant is fake or real. So if you don't have an ability to keep those poor plants alive, just get a fake one because you will still get a health benefit of having greenery in your house. And you know, they conducted a very thorough research how people recover from the illnesses in the hospitals. There were several plants, very fake ones, spread around the room, as well as the photos of the windows. So our brain is so smart, but so stupid. All the patients started to recover on an equal level. So do I like fake plants? Maybe not my favorite. Still, they work. Passing by this beautiful TV stand, which we created in one week using three different suppliers. I just wanted to mention that so many, many, many interior designers are moaning about ventilation grills and all the other pieces they would obviously hate to see in the properties. But you really need to think how to turn a developer's disaster, and obviously a necessity, into some bit of a good interior design. So this TV stand, in the very, very, very bottom of the TV stand, we have those amazing holes for the ventilation. But I think as soon as those holes are covered in beautiful gray and beige travertine, we actually have an interior design detail, not a disaster. As I mentioned before, we actually have three bedrooms in the property, and that is obviously the most favorite, most beautiful master bedroom. Well, we had a little disagreement with the developer where the bed should go. They believe the bed should go on this wall, which is long, nice, and it blocks half of the room so you cannot get anything else into the room. Well, I decided the bed should go to that wall, which was way too short, and you can clearly see it on the top. So I had to come up with some idea how to make the wall wider to fit 180 centimeter wide bed, which we successfully did by just creating this beautiful paneling, which you can obviously take down to access the ventilation system on the back. I quite like having those side panels, I think they make the bed a little bit more private and cozy. My absolute love from the first sight was this beautiful fabric for the headboard. Some people would believe it is not practical, it's a headboard, and it is absolutely fine and practical for the headboard. I think when you will see a close-up, you will appreciate those absolutely amazing metal threads, and I'm all about a little bit of glimmer, very subtle, but glimmer nevertheless. We get pillowcases monogrammed, so here we just have Chelsea barracks, and bear in mind how beautiful, beautiful, beautiful this silvery green line is working with the headboard, like I'm absolutely not obsessed about details. This coffee table is one of my best buys on the First Deeps. To be honest, it looks so much more expensive than it is. We paid, I think, 1.5 thousand for it, and it is an actual vintage beautiful piece from a wonderful person called Vili Balis. We sourced it from First Deeps. Again, he's a brutalist, and obviously I love it. I mean, research shows you shouldn't be having TV in your bedroom, but who cares about research when people just want to watch Netflix before they go to bed. So, that's the TV, and take your mind a little bit off this TV, which is so flat. I absolutely adore it. Thank you, Samsung. I know that a lot of designers now are trying not to use glossy pieces. They're kind of saying it was like fashionable years and years ago, but I think when you have this beautiful color, I think it's like a tiny bit of luxury you still can keep. Yeah, I think the dose. Everything is a drug, and everything is a poison. The next stop is this beautiful master bathroom. As any luxurious bathroom, it obviously has everything. Spacious shower, plenty of storage, and when I say plenty, I mean plenty of storage behind those mirrors, and you know, so many people are saying how beautiful white and gray marble is in a bathroom. So elegant. Come on, shoot me. Like, you absolutely have to make it exciting. No one wants a boring bathroom, so that's the reason we introduced this absolutely stunning green, like real pop of color artwork. I absolutely love it. You can see it from every angle of the room, and specifically when you're putting your makeup on, you can see how beautiful is the backdrop. There's a very simple recipe of a good hallway. So, you need a console table where you drop all your keys on. You need a full-size mirror, because you do really want to know how do you look before you actually love the house, and a little bench to put your shoes on. I don't think you can go without. Some people are trying, but they're failing. Also, like, I'm a big believer in wallpapers, but in the hallway, I much prefer to have paint. This beautiful olive color was actually one of the late, like, last choices in the interior. We already done all the rooms, and we've been thinking what can actually pull the color scheme together. So, we thought this olive green is just perfect. This mirror, again, I'm coming back to it. It was born from the necessity. I'm really enjoying it. Behind this mirror, we have all the AC equipment. Again, surprise, surprise. That's a reality of modern living. We have a little handle here. So, if we need to access the equipment, we can just get the door open. So, let me show you a guest bedroom. As a guest, what would you actually expect to see in a guest bedroom? A little bit of unexpected art, a very soft bed, very comfortable chair to read, because, you know, again, the research says you shouldn't be reading in the bed. You should be reading somewhere else, but you really want to run away from everyone in the living area. So, you absolutely have to have a chair in the bedroom, so you can chill a little bit before actually getting to sleep. So, I love the shape of this headboard. I have the same headboard in my house and I'm truly enjoying it. And another thing we always love, when we have the headboard with kind of a dip, we always love to buy some sort of piece of art or a mirror or something which will be repeating the dip of the headboard. So, we've been very lucky this beautiful mirror actually did fit. The ceilings are not too high, so we had to calculate till the millimeter to get the whole composition in. This bedroom actually has its own bathroom. It is a smaller size than the master bathroom. And as the size is a bit smaller, it is nice to have it in a darker color. The darker marble works so well in small bathrooms. You cannot fake the size, but you can make a small bathroom very cozy by using the darker finishes. As I mentioned before, this is a three-bedroom apartment. So, now we are in a bedroom three, which has its own bathroom, but we decided it would be best to style it as an office. Because, you know, at the moment, let's not pretend everyone is loving working from home. So, you have to be comfortable in your home when you work and you really need your absolutely own separate space. And it has, again, surprise, surprise, a swivel chair, so you can easily get in. And it is a perfect laptop size. This desk is also part of my collection and we use it quite a lot in the living rooms when people want to have like a little tiny bit of homeworking space while still enjoying being part of the family. This is a size small and there's another size, size large. Because it's so simple and very neat, we put our chips on the material of the worktop. So, I'm always picking the most beautiful worktops. Here we have this wonderful green marble. It can be done in a range of colors. Then I just stood from a very smart looking sofa. And it is a sofa bed. But, you know, when you have a sofa bed in your house, those friends, they tend to stay. So, my little trick and advice, make the sofa bed uncomfortable. You don't want them to be stuck forever in your house. They have a home. You love them, but they have their own home. And now when you've seen the whole apartment, I just want to talk about outdoors. You know, London is a true melting pot. But one thing all the cultures do have in mind is the idea of coming by home. So, Chelsea Barracks is a perfect home. Everything is there, everything is on your doorstep. Top tier gym, wonderful spa area and a tennis court. Can you believe a tennis court in your own building? So, this place is now for sale. We've been very privileged to design it, but now it's time to let it go. So, it's for sale or rent. Rent $35k or advice to buy, obviously. Who doesn't want to call it a home? And guys, thank you for watching. It was a pleasure. Hi, Luxury Home Show. I'm Leanne of Good Bones and welcome to my townhouse in London.