'We are not just another young couple who stumbled across an 18th-century house dirt cheap and remodelled it with grit, initiative and £50. We didn't tear down dingy Victorian fireplaces to find - surprise - superb Adam mantelpieces sitting snugly behind them, and there was no attic in which to discover a dusty but exquisite Sheraton table that only needed stripping to look perfect. We never actually bid for anything at a country auction; the prices were always too high when the bidding started. And finally, we did not paint the whole house and re-lay the floor in one weekend, only taking time off to knock up picnic meals of Chicken a la King or cheese soufflé. It took all our spare time for nearly two months to lay the living room floor; our marriage nearly broke up before it started because of the many bitter words about the right way to apply Phenoglaze. But we admit to a predilection for junk shops, although most of the ones we first visited seemed to contain nothing but junk which was expensive at half the price.
'We made four small rooms at the top of the house (part of a solidly built Regency terrace) into one large open-plan living room. We have discovered two disadvantages; our son Sebastian normally stays in his nursery, except at meals, but when we gave a party in the living room for his first birthday we had to barricade the staircase with the sofa to prevent the children falling downstairs. The second disadvantage is that, although in theory it is a good idea to be able to cook and listen to the conversation going on in the living room, in fact, the conversation tends to be distracting to the cook who is tempted to wander away from the stove and join in some fascinating gossip only to be abruptly recalled by something burning or boiling over.
'Open-plan living has proved most successful with us, but this is partly because we have plenty of room in the rest of the house, even though the basement is occupied by our housekeeper and the ground floor is let as a self-contained flat. Our bedroom is on the second floor and we work in the first-floor studio. However, the atmosphere of quiet concentration there may soon be shattered unless we install sound-proof doors, because the next room is the nursery.
