枕山棲谷 英國鄉村別墅之旅：山牆山別墅

Hi Boardwalk, I'm Tim. Welcome to my English country house. Come on in. A lot of people told us that it was a stupid decision. And quite possibly they were right. I mean, you know, we didn't really have the funds to renovate it. We've done it very slowly over the last 10 years and we're still going. But we knew that this type of property wasn't going to come up very often and it just felt right for us. There's something about the romance of the wreck a bit. Like I think we felt like we wanted to come in and rescue the house to a certain extent. And to restore it and preserve it. It's just the two of us, my partner Daniel and I. And the house is perched on the side of the northern hills. It was built in the 1850s as a holiday home for wealthy businessmen. It had been a well-loved family home, but it needed serious updating and serious repair work. You know, there was a time when it felt like every floorboard in the house was up. But we were still living in the house. And there have been moments where we've been stretched financially. But from the moment we moved in, it was a dream come true. It was definitely the right decision. So we just happened to live a stone's throw from the UK's largest flea market. So 95% of the things in this house came from there. And I just think that's great because you can just find such interesting stuff. I would describe my design style as eclectic, layered and English country house. I like to mix up patterns and I don't worry too much about whether it matches or not. I just go with stuff I love and then work out how to put it all together later. Because this is a Victorian house, I knew that I wanted to have some William Morris somewhere. And so I gathered all these samples and then couldn't really tune. So I ended up framing a whole load of them and just make a kind of gallery wall. I'm very happy with it.It's a nice quirky feature. So it has been a question of just sort of buying little bits and pieces at the flea market over the years. But as it's turned out, that's I think the look I was going for. You know, this kind of slow, gathered over time look. It does feel like living in a work of art. We feel like we're kind of custodians of a work of art basically. And we don't want to change things necessarily. So there are features here that we don't particularly like. But I feel that they should stay. And we're interested in keeping the integrity of the building intact. Whilst we have put our own stamp on it, we're actually more concerned with restoring it to its Victorian proportions. So we wanted all our style decisions to reference the house or to be in keeping with the house. I'm a freelance musician and piano teacher. So we needed a room to call a music room. And this felt like the obvious choice. I mean, it's a sort of all-encompassing beauty art experience, you know. The view, the oak panelling, the music all kind of coming together. It sounded a bit pretentious. It feels like a real privilege to live here. And to be custodians for this extraordinary building is something we're very grateful for.