baroque of ages
Treasured antiques and salvaged finds are displayed with flair in a Northumberland house
When Di Overton first came across this Northumberland cottage, she was living in a townhouse in Newcastle, and although having a weekend retreat was her partner Harvey Roll’s dream rather than her own, Di was still keen to see the property.
‘As we pulled up outside,’ she recalls, ‘I said, “This is tiny! Shall we even bother looking?” But the owner was standing, waiting. So we went in, saw the views, looked at each other and both said, “Yes!”.’
Reinvention is what Di does best. As the designer-owner of Ghost Furniture, she takes vintage pieces and creates something new. The couple’s cottage, too, has been reworked for each stage of their ownership, from its early days as a weekend bolthole to its most recent – Harvey sadly died three years ago – as Di’s full-time home.
When they bought it, the cottage had been a holiday let and needed to be modernised. ‘The fireplace had an electric fire in it and the bathroom was avocado and only had a shower,’ says Di. Over time, they improved the interior with a new kitchen and bathroom. It was only in 2006, when they decided to sell their townhouse and move to Northumberland, that the couple thought of extending.
With the help of a planner friend, they drew up a design to almost double the original footprint, creating a large open-plan kitchen and living area, and above it, moving the bathroom from the back of the original cottage, to the side, and adding a large master bedroom. With the luxury of space, they were free to section off a generous kitchen-dining area, leaving plenty of room for a sitting room and study space for each of them.
Aged and worn items work well with the cottage’s relaxed interior style. ‘I looked for reclaimed flooring,’ says Di, ‘ but it was a ludicrous price for boards so thick that they would reduce the head height here, so we just put normal floorboards in and bashed them with chains. When the builders were working here, I was saying, “Scrape things over them…”. They couldn’t believe it.’
Vintage fabrics, offbeat finds from French brocantes and favourite antiques all come into the decorating mix. Di’s wit and flair is evident in quirky details, such as the piece of silver birch tree trunk that supports the breakfast bar in the kitchen.
Now she is planning a six-month sabbatical, dividing her time between visiting her daughter in France and son in Barcelona. Elegant as the interior is, it is the surrounding countryside Di loves best and will miss the most. ‘I look out of the two windows at the front and every day the view is different,’ she says. ‘It’s like having two ever-changing oil paintings on your wall.’