TIME AND AGAIN
This chalet in The french alps gets a glamorous, neutral-palette makeover by The homeowner and her interior-designer friend
A French Alps chalet gets a glamorous makeover
‘If Kate isn’t available to help me on a project, I’ll wait,’ says the owner of this chalet in the French alps. This was her third renovation project with the designer Kate earle. The first, her house in London, was over 10 years ago. They are now not only designer and client, but ‘partners in crime’ and firm friends. The owner, who has been heavily involved in each project, says that even now, after all this experience, she would be loath to do a project by herself. ‘Kate brings an aspect to it that I never could,’ she explains. Kate’s natural bent is also for a slightly softer, prettier look than the owner’s and she is happy to be pulled in this direction.
The clients had walked past this Twenties chalet for years and longed to own it. In the same family for generations, it had been chopped up into minute bedrooms and shower rooms, and the basement was very uninviting. The tiles in the entrance hall that were revealed when the lino was removed were the only internal detail they could salvage.
Local architect Lionel adam, of smile design & architecture, was brought in. ‘We wanted to maintain the beauty and integrity of the exterior, but have interiors that are “us”, with a little element of surprise,’ says the owner. The exterior therefore is still very much the ‘edelweiss style’ that you would expect, but the house has been cleverly reoriented so that it now overlooks the town as well as Mont Blanc, as it did before. existing openings in the main reception room were made into floorto-ceiling French windows, connecting the room with the new terrace and garden, designed by randle siddeley.
The interior is indeed unexpected. Lightfilled, with a soothing colour palette, and furnished with glamorous twentiethcentury pieces, it is its own little jewellery box of a world, and not like a
conventional chalet at all – the only exposed wood is the oak parquet floor in chic grey rather than rustic red. as the owners come here in summer as well as in winter, they-wanted it to feel personal. Kate says, ‘It is a Twenties house in a town; it didn’t feel right to decorate it in a typical chalet style.’ also, both Kate and the owner strongly believe that, as the owner puts it, ‘a house is soulless if it doesn’t have things that have had another life.’
The ground floor has been opened up to become one open-plan living space comprising a kitchen, dining room, sitting area and library/television area, while cleverly preserving a cosiness to each space and a correct sense of proportion. simple, flat mouldings, which continue the lines of the glazing bars, were applied to the walls to articulate them and to pull the spaces together. a new staircase leads down to the basement, a gym, hammam, massage room and home cinema. It also leads up to the main bedroom, a study and the spare room. For the former, Kate commissioned a special handembroidered fabric to line the wall behind the bed, picking up colours used elsewhere in the room. The spare room was ‘a bit of a departure for the owner,’ says Kate; the moment she saw the room, the pretty nicole Fabre print used for the curtains came to mind. It had been discontinued, but she had it reprinted and teamed it with a specialist-painted frieze and decorative wicker mirrors.
The attic is the children’s domain, and every bit as sophisticated as the rest of the house, yet fun. There are two bedrooms; one is large, with four beds tucked into the eaves. The second bedroom is tiny, with one bed ingeniously built in under another, in an L-shape configuration.
It is a deeply comfortable and practical house, but with a distinct sense of glamour. The owner is full of praise for all involved, from the architect to Kate, ‘It was a really happy collaboration,’ she enthuses.