The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Inside story
Irrefutable evidence that second-hand and sustainable materials can be chic, not shabby.
The eco-friendly house that didn’t cost a fortune
Purists might argue that for a home to be truly sustainable you need to start from the ground up, installing expensive hi-tech heat pumps, double glazing and other high-spec essentials.
Natasha Birley takes a more pragmatic approach. For this eco-aware interior designer, sustainability is about ‘the individual choices you can afford to make, however small’. It is a rationale she has put into practice in her own home and it’s
budget-friendly, too. Almost everything in the two-up twodown Victorian cottage in Surrey that she shares with her fiancé Ed Pitt and their dog Alma has been upcycled, recycled, hand-built or handmade, and set against a backdrop of paints and furnishings made from natural materials.
There’s nothing homespun or cheap-looking about the final effect. You could call the look modern country: unfussy and peppered with striking art and antiques. ‘I like things to look considered, not random or shabby chic,’ explains Birley, 27, who won a scholarship to study at the Inchbald School of Design before setting up her interior design company, Tatty Bird (it’s her beloved maternal grandmother’s nickname), in 2017.
‘I started Tatty Bird because I was shocked by the waste in our industry,’ she says. ‘We need to be more thoughtful about the way we consume. For me, sustainable design is about taking time to find special things you won’t get bored of.’
Birley grew up in South Africa before moving to West Sussex when she was 12. She and Pitt, who works in property, were living in London when they found the cottage. ‘I love the city, but it’s not my natural habitat,’ she admits. ‘This place is perfect. It’s commutable but we can go for walks with our dog from our door.’ The cottage had been empty for several years when the couple first saw it in 2017, with sagging plaster walls and a kitchen consisting of a sink and a cupboard.
They did most of the decorating work themselves. ‘I focus on the aesthetics, while Ed’s very practical,’ says Birley. Although the traditional layout remains unchanged (the bathroom is still downstairs), one of the first things they did was to punch
through the back wall to add the dining room. In the kitchen they restored the brick fireplace, adding an antique French dresser as a tea and coffee ‘shed’ and wooden cabinets made locally. They spotted the second-hand woodburner on Facebook Marketplace, and the limestone flooring was another steal: ‘We found it on Gumtree, it was left over from a large building project.’
For Birley, who usually works on high-end residential projects, her own home provided an excuse to experiment with new finishes. The swirling plaster effect of the twilight-blue bedroom walls was achieved by using an eco-friendly limewash paint. ‘It’s made from clay, minerals and natural pigments [as opposed to standard paints that usually contain chemicals and toxins]; you use a special brush and apply it in soft, circular strokes,’ she explains. ‘It’s more expensive than conventional paint, but I didn’t want to cut corners on important things.’
Almost everything here has had a past life. ‘I’ve become slightly obsessed with finding second-hand things and reinventing them,’ says Birley. Online auctions, house clearances and skips are her hunting grounds. She has turned salvaged doors into built-in wardrobes, stitched together a collection of rugs found on ebay to make a stair runner, and found pristine bath fittings at a carboot sale. ‘If I can’t find it second hand, then I’ll source things from local makers,’ she says, pointing out hand-printed cushions by Imogen Heath.
The Tatty Bird HQ is at the end of the garden in a cabin, overlooking the vegetable patch. Bright and snug, the timber-framed structure is insulated in sheep’s wool and recycled paper, made in the UK. ‘It’s as sustainable as we could afford to make it,’ sums up Birley. tattybird.com