WHEN Juan Corbella first saw the Clerkenwell space in 1998, it was a shell. The 1900s building had latterly been a print works. There was ink on the floor and Page 3 girls on the walls. Corbella, who moved to England in 1994, was smitten.

Standing amid the dirt, he envisaged a massive open-plan living space and two bedrooms. The 41-year-old City trader knew he wanted to do the work himself. “I need to be creative,” says the Mexican, who was raised in Spain.

The vendor, a developer, planned to turn the 2,600sq ft space into two luxury apartments.

“For the shell, I had to pay the price intended for the finished property,” explains Corbella, with equanimity. He forked out £600,000 and spent a further £300,000 on everything from renovations to the stereo. A stereo which, incidentally, is a state-of-the-art Lynn affair with Dalek-sized speakers.

The transformation from rubble to sophisticated bachelor pad was not easy. He hired architects Andrew Hanson and Richard Webb, who worked closely to his specifications. And Corbella, who lived nearby, went onsite most days.

First, they had to move a staircase that separated the two spaces. Then the builders went bankrupt and downed tools. “I was meant to move in in June 1999,” says Corbella. “Instead, it took until February 2000.”

The finished result was worth the wait.

Two curved, frosted-glass structures provide the hall walls and screen the living area from view. They are actually shower enclosures.

Do arriving visitors see the occupants bathing? “Of course,” laughs Corbella.

A 2,000sq ft sitting room leads off the hall, flanked on one side by a wall of windows, on another by a bank of 14 white cupboards and on the remaining sides by sliding, glass partitions, used to hide the kitchen and create a corridor.

The overall feeling is sensual: there are pillars, curved walls, curved furniture, curved false ceilings to hide pipes, even curved edges to the steps leading to floors on slightly different levels. The floor is oak and the walls are white, alongside splashes of Mexican primal colours. And it is all lit by seductive, atmospheric lighting created by a Lutron system.

The windows define the sitting, dining and television areas. Recently, they were fitted with 3M Night Vision, a film that reduces UV rays, heat and glare. “Until then, it was boiling in here,” explains Corbella. “And the furniture was getting ruined.”

A brass Mexican monkey is suspended from the sitting-room ceiling. This area also boasts electric-blue sofas and orange chairs by Moroso, a bright yellow wall, exposed brickwork and a blue Lucy Wassell rug with geometrical shapes that Corbella helped to design. There is also a bulky, Islamic-style, hexagonal coffee table created by David Linley, again to Corbella’s specifications.

“Look …” he says, and suddenly disassembles it to create six occasional tables.

Nearby is the television “room”, with a red leather aquiline couch and a large flatscreen television, which (a Corbella invention, this) swivels on an aluminium pole.

A cupboard with curved edges (Corbella-designed, natch) conceals floor-to-ceiling opera CDs … and we’re talking a high ceiling here. “I’m passionate about opera,” reveals Corbella, needlessly. The “study corner” houses a bespoke Linley bureau (which cost £16,000 in 1995), with its terrace of architectural model veneer houses and tower hiding his stationery. “Linley was sceptical of my idea that this asymmetrical design would work.” But work it does.

AT THE other end of the apartment is the dining area, with a B&B Italia glass table and silver leather chairs from Catalan Italia.

A metal-and-glass display table – again designed by You Know Who – contains a large decorative egg collection.

“I didn’t buy one egg. They’re mostly gifts from my parents. Once you have 10 eggs, everyone assumes you collect them.”

This area leads onto the compact kitchen.

Eye-arresting, pillar-box-red lacquer units are opened via sculptural geometrical cutouts (from boomerang to bone shapes.) “I didn’t want handles,” he explains. There is a breakfast island and black granite work surfaces. “I took cordon bleu and Le Manoir cookery courses. I like doing dinner parties.”

The master bedroom has exposed-brick and light-blue and yellow walls, one with wooden columns on it. And a four-poster frame around a £10,000 Auping bed. “The frame was made by Nicky Stephens. When he ran out of English walnut, he had to wait for another English tree to fall down.” It took seven months to finish.

Pull back the glass panels and the bathroom (Philippe Starck bath, blue mosaic-glass shower) becomes part of the bedroom. Next door is a guest bedroom and bathroom.

It is all extremely comfortable and everything is made with great precision – no expense spared. It is also a City whizz kid’s remote-control heaven, where almost everything operates by touch.

This man of many talents is now looking for a new loft. He wants better views and outside space. “But mostly I want to do up something again,” says Corbella, restlessly.

“It was fun.”

With that, he presses a control on his bed, and the mattress starts moving into different positions.

HOW TO GET THE LOOK

Architects

Web Architects Ltd: Richard Web and Andrew Hanson (020 7328 0310)

Furniture and fittings

David Linley Furniture Ltd (020 7730 7300, www.davidlinley.com)

Sofas and chairs by Moroso, dining table by B&B Italia, dining chairs by Catalan Italia available at Atrium (020 7379 7288, www.atrium.ltd.co.uk)

Bed by Royal Auping (020 7935 3774, www.auping.co.uk). Frame by Nicky Stephens, carpenter, at Raleigh Workshop (020 7733 8110)

Rug by Lucy Wassell at WaWa (020 7729 6768, www.wawa.co.uk)

3M Night Vision film for heat and UV ray reduction by Durable (0870 240 2480, www.durable.co.uk)

Motorised blinds with remote control by Luxaflex (0800 652 7799, www.luxaflex.com)

Lutron lighting system (0800 282 107, www.lutron.com)

Radiators by Bisque (020 7328 2225, www.bisque.co.uk)

THERE are not many people who own a former synagogue.

But that is what artist Maya Brisley has in her back garden. Built by refugees from the Warsaw ghetto, it is the smallest synagogue in Britain. Access has always been through Brisley’s east London home. “When I moved in, the synagogue was falling down, and everything had to be done to it,” she explains. Now it houses Brisley’s studio and has a spectacular glass floor – which doubles as a glass ceiling for the ground floor.

She also throws parties in it.

The house is Georgian, built by Huguenots. “It was a weaver’s home, so it’s not ornate,” explains Brisley, who who owns Canal, a shop that sells antiques, textiles and jewellery bought during her world travels. The floors (mostly original pine) still slope from having supported the looms; the dining room used to be the material shop. And most of the property’s original panelling, fireplaces and shutters remain.

The house is a typical town house: tall, with lots of rooms, opened up only where the hallway and drawing room dividing walls had fallen down. “There were such constraints when I did it up,” says Brisley, who is wearing a long Indian robe. “It’s Grade II* listed, and I wasn’t allowed to touch anything – although there’s not much you can do with a panelled kitchen.” Untouchable panels do not permit much bedroom cupboard space, either.

She paid £250,000 for the 5,000sq ft property when she bought it in 1994, from a lady who was a friend of an Admiral. “It looked like a ship,” laughs Brisley. “It was painted navy and white, and decorated with nautical maps.”

She pared the house back to its original form. “It was tumbling down. I had to reinstate things [the restorations are sympathetic] and do everything, from the wiring onwards.” Brisley did not begin work until she had lived there for two years. “That way I didn’t make mistakes,” she says. “If you do things too quickly, it’s expensive, because you have to redo them.”

She did not start decorating the property for five years.

The paintwork in the house is very distinctive. From the ochre walls in the dining room and hall and the black banisters and shutters, to a Cork green kitchen; a traditional 18th century kitchen colour. “It stopped insects. Originally it had arsenic in it,” says Brisley. “Lick the paint and you die.”

The sitting room is mahogany, the bedroom fleshy.

“Rather pompously, I call them Titian colours,” she says. “I mixed the colours using artists’ acrylics.

It lasts much longer. It’s like painting a canvas, which lasts hundreds of years.” And it is true that the paintwork looks fresh, even after several years.

When Brisley arrived in England, she had no possessions. Her father was an Armenian Jew, but she was raised in Istanbul by a nomadic mother who had travelled across Asia, living in a tent. Now she is an obsessive collector. Every available surface is covered.

Bread shelves display multidenominational religious icons in the drawing room. There is also a large French fruitwood table spread with a superb collection of antique Himalayan and African tribal masks, a white lacquer Charles Eames oval coffee table, an Edwardian ship’s day bed, a circular Coptic table fashioned from one piece of wood, and Asian textiles and cushions are everywhere.

The dining room sports a chandelier (“chucked out by a neighbour”), a green-painted French farmer’s table, a Welsh lambing stool and an Irish fool’s chair. “I’m not a great entertainer,” says Brisley. “I take friends to St John restaurant.”

In the hallway are Greek Orthodox tamata – images punched in tin seeking divine cures and protection.

In the bathroom, a Chinese lacquer table and antique Indian juggernaut ( chariot) wheel have been modified to serve as bathroom cabinets-The window blind is an Asian shawl. Every object has a story – this one came from American trading ships, that one from a Punjabi tribesperson, while the other was Brisley’s grandmother’s marriage rug.

OUTSIDE, the original Victorian street lights glow dimly. Inside, the lights are low.

Brisley lives with two Bengal cats. Until recently she also shared her home with ghosts.

“I used to hear buckets being moved and floors being scrubbed upstairs,” says Brisley, who is also a Tarot reader and comes from a tradition of mystics. Once, I saw two women wearing 18th century clothes. But they’ve gone now.”

IF YOU haven’t yet heard of Katharine Pooley, you soon will. Pooley, erstwhile banker, adventurer and author of an unusual cookbook-cum-travelogue, A Taste of My World, is launching her eponymous Knightsbridge shop.

Dedicated to luxurious living and interiors, it will sell furnishings from Vietnamese tableware to Japanese antique kimono cushions and offers an upmarket interior design service.

“You’ll be able to buy everything you see here,” says thirtysomething Pooley, sitting in her stylish home with its fusion of East and West, contemporary and traditional. “I’m opening the shop because people keep asking where I get these beautiful things.”

So where does she get them? A mixture of everywhere, from the Parisian Marche aux Puces (for Louis XIV) to Bangkok market (gilt Buddhas and suchlike) and Burmese shops (good for Cambodian nick-nacks).

Not to mention the other places she comes across when dog-sledding in Alaska, horseback trekking in Ecuador or visiting Cambodian orphans: this is a woman who flies helicopters, shoots, cooks professionally and intends to climb Mount Everest.

In a cream Ralph Lauren wool skirt, matching sleeveless cashmere jumper, large solitaire diamond and strappy snakeskin shoes, Pooley’s sartorial style matches the décor in her Belgravia home. It is tranquil, fresh, clean and sophisticated, with buttermilk paint, taupe suede curtains, atmospheric John Cullen Design lighting, old limestone and wood floors and almond carpet throughout. Plus lots of Eastern artefacts.

When Pooley and her investment banker husband, Rob, saw the Belgravia house, they instantly fell for it. It was made up of three early-Victorian mews houses that had been knocked into one and entered through a secluded courtyard. “We loved it because it was on two floors,” explains Pooley. “We only saw one other house before buying it.” That was three years ago, when the couple – who also own a Colorado ski lodge, Phuket villa and a Scottish castle – were living in their house in Singapore.

When they bought the property, two men had lived there. “It had just two bedrooms and one bathroom.

Their bedrooms ran the length of the (4,200sq ft) house.”

Pooley’s business partner, Kerry Stone, helped to transform the house into a five-bedroom home with ample entertaining space. “We rewired, knocked through three rooms to make a family room, put three French windows in the drawing room, extended to build a study, made two more bathrooms and a laundry room and drying room.”

THE renovation work took 18 months and the couple moved in, with their four dogs, only two months ago.

No children? “We’re practising making them,” laughs Pooley, who married in 2002.

The drawing room reveals an eclectic mix of first-edition books, 17th-century hats, comfy sofas, zebraskin coffee table, Eastern antiquities, modern Asian sculptures, a massive, contemporary Chinese painting of Communist Party members by Yin Xin and a grand piano. “Mozart played on it. I took piano lessons so that I could surprise my husband on his 40th birthday,” giggles Pooley. “But everyone begged me to stop playing.”

There are silver-framed photos on top of the piano: “That’s the lady who introduced me to my husband on a blind date,” she says, pointing.

“That’s my grandfather. He invented the epidural.”

The drawing room is big enough to incorporate most of the members of the Royal Geographic Society. “I’m hoping to host a party for them,” she says, excitedly. “There’ll be a chocolate fountain, lectures and lots of explorers.” And a £25,000 homecinema installed by then.

Next door, the £75,000 Smallbone family room has a central island and work surfaces covered in unfinished, textured granite, a bespoke Ralph Lauren chest as a coffee table, Sub-Zero and Gaggenau appliances and limitededition photographs of Edmund Hillary’s Everest expedition. It leads onto a formal dining room containing a mixture of Asian antiquities and English 18th century furniture: a Chippendale dining table sits alongside a Burmese chest and six Burmese Mantra statues and English antique dining chairs are stacked with Eastern cushions.

The eclectic mix is repeated upstairs. In their bedroom are antique Asian bedside tables and bench, Vietnamese art, their wedding music framed on the wall, a Louis Vuitton trunk and an antique Scottish voting box.

The D C Dot Company bathroom has black slate walls, walnut cabinets and a limestone floor fringed with beach stones. “Rob wanted dark surfaces for masculinity. I wanted light for femininity.” It boasts a wet-room with overhead shower and vertical water jets, and a Victorian roll-top bath. “Another compromise,” laughs Pooley, who hails from Scotland. “I wanted a bath. But Rob is American.”

The meeting of cultures, styles and interests is everywhere. There’s the planned-for children’s bedroom, with a Chinese opium bed and rare Emperor’s crib; a guestroom with antique European sleigh bed and an attic housing mountaineering and golfing equipment.

And in the courtyard? Well, there’s an old French fountain to aid thirsty dogs and for feng shui, an English stone bench and a red Hong Kong rickshaw. “I spent 15 years in the East,” explains Pooley. “I keep thinking I’m just on holiday here.”

Katharine Pooley, 160 Walton Street, SW3 (020 7584 3223; enquiries katharinepooley.com; www.katharinepooley.com)

Where Katharine Pooley shops

FOR MY LONDON HOME Lighting: Sally Storey at John Cullen Lighting (020 7371 5400) English 18th century antiques: Ronald Phillips (020 7493 2341; email ronaldphillipsltd.co.uk) Carpet: Ulster Carpets (0808 100 0979; www.ulstercarpets.com) Floors: Drummond’s Architectural Antiques (020 7376 4499; www.drummonds-arch.co.uk) Beds: Sophisto-Cat Furniture (020 7731 2221) Kitchen: Smallbone of Devizes (020 7581 9989; www.smallbone.co.uk)

EUROPE

In Paris, I love the antiques square Le Louvre des Antiquaires in Place du Palais Royal (0033 142 975 5212), especially Galerie Heritages, which sells the best range of antique clubstyle chairs. In London, I love Soo San, 598a King’s Road (020 7731 2063), which has a superb collection of antique Chinese furniture and art.

WORLDWIDE

Lotus: Singapore and Thailand (www.lotusartsdevivre.com).

Exquisite accessories and gifts.

Soul of Asia: Phuket (0066 7621 1122; email: info@soulofasia.com web; www.soulofasiathailandartgallery.com). Wonderful Asian art and antiques.

Pagoda House: Singapore (0065 732 2177; www.pagodahouse.com). Marvellous collection of art de vivre and antiques focusing on the south of Asia, Indonesia, Burma and Cambodia.

WHEN fashion designers Martin Barrell and his partner, Amanda Sellers, found their north London apartment in 2001, they immediately decided that they wanted it. It was not the fact that, apart from a dribble of paint, it had not been touched for 25 years, nor was it the shoddy conversion that swayed them. It was the 75-foot outdoor space full of supermarket trolleys, knee-high weeds, old sheds and rusty bicycles that clinched it.

“For five years in our Notting Hill flat, we’d looked down at people enjoying barbecues and thought, ‘That’s what we want to do’,” says Barrell. Now he has a beautiful cottage garden, created by Sellers, in which to sizzle sausages.

The couple own Maisonette, the ironically titled suburban-glamour homestore in Kensal Rise.

Think decorative: retro, modern and vintage; it stocks, among other things, cushions made from scarves, 1970s sideboards and paintings. Their home has a strong Sixties and Seventies influence, and is a testing ground for their shop.

“We like to see what things look like in a home environment,” says Barrell, who only sells pieces he likes. “We don’t go for the Austin Powers pop look. We’re into subdued designs.”

When the couple bought their apartment, they had a budget of £35,000 for building works. They started by reconfiguring the property, turning what was a three-bedroom flat into a two bedroom one by putting a bathroom in what was the third bedroom. They also converted two other rooms into a kitchen.

“We put in sash windows and new doors, and took off some other doors to open things up,” explains Barrell, who did the spec drawings for the builders. “We stripped, rewired, replumbed, replastered and, well, re-everything.”

Then the couple painted the wooden floorboards Farrow & Ball black and the walls Dulux white. “We wanted to work off a blank canvas.” A blank canvas in a late-Victorian home with period features.

The couple have been clever at taking low-cost interior pieces and using them in a way that makes them look expensive.

In the kitchen, they have used glossy white Magnet units – including three freezer units, which create a stylish wall of cupboards – with an economical laminate worktop. “It’s £160 on work-surfaces, rather than £4,500 on Corian,” says Barrell.

In the bedroom, he has eight Ikea mirrored wardrobes.

“If you use something en masse, you make a big statement with it.”

Even the hospital-style radiators are from B&Q – juxtaposed with two stylish Bisque ones, which raise the tone.

Against this backdrop are dramatic, vintage accessories.

Throughout the flat are spectacular light fittings: in the bedroom, two 1960s tiered, textured Murano glass wall lights from Les Couilles Du Chien, while in the bathroom, a 1970s Murano glass chandelier from vintage light specialist Ollie’s “that weighs a ton”.

In the sitting room, a pair of vintage glass wall lights glow beautifully, while in the dining room, a sequin-style bronze-tinted glass pendant light hangs from the ceiling. The overall look is simple, but decorative. In the sitting room, Barrell and Sellers have two 1960s chrome-and-leather Pieff sofas, offset by a sequinned Geraldine Larkin cushion.

“She designs embroidery for couture clients and a small range of interiors pieces,” Barrell says. The sitting room also has a Danish rosewood sideboard, vintage chrome-and-rosewood coffee table, and, for warmth, sheepskin rugs and cushions made from silk scarves. On the wall is a large, retro still-life of painting-by-numbers flowers, designed by Barrell and sold as a DIY kit in the couple’s shop for £130.

Vases and a brass cherub candelabra sit on the imposing Victorian Carrara marble mantelpiece, above the fireplace.

“When we moved in, the fireplaces were all 1930s tiled ones,” Barrell says. “We found the originals in bits in the cellar. So we got this [marble one] from Retrouvius reclamation.”

The dining room is open-plan with a 1960s Arkana table and matching swivel chairs. Above the table, a Geraldine Larkin hand-stitched sequin panel echoes the room’s slightly goldenbrown Italian chandelier.

ELSEWHERE, along the exposed-brick hallway (“It was like that when we bought it. We love its textural feel”), in which a 1960s Pieff dining chair is placed, lies the master bedroom. It has a theatrical 1950s Italian gilt-and-white painted chest, French 1930s painted bed and huge black sheepskin rugs.

Sellers’s vintage shoes, clothes and handbags, hanging off handles and placed on boxes, provide a further dramatic touch.

In the corner is a Charles Eames chair. “It’s rare because it’s finished in chrome,” says Barrell.

The bathroom is lined with inexpensive white tiles and featuring a sunken Bette bath, which has towel storage in its side panel. “The bathroom floor was seven inches lower than the rest of the flat,” says Barrell. “So we left the bath at that level.”

Italian mock-slate covers the floor, which, says Barrell, is “more economical and durable than slate, because it’s made of ceramic”. And, “for hiding everything”, there is a a wall of mirror-fronted, bespoke cupboards, lit from beneath.

There is one other thing that is hidden. Secreted behind a door, there is a labyrinthian cellar-cum-studio, from where Barrell creates his floral canvases, and looks up happily at his barbecue.

WHERE TO GET THE LOOK

For 20th century design
Maisonette: 79 Chamberlayne Road, NW10 (020 8964 8444; www.maisonette.uk.com)
www.sit-on-it.uk.com: 07815 841573
Les Couilles Du Chien: 65 Golborne Road, W10 (020 8968 0099)
Repsycho: 85 Gloucester Road, Bristol (0117 983 0007)

For vintage lights
Ollie’s: 69 Golborne Road, W10 (07768 790 725)

For the bathroom
MC Stone: 69a Goldney Road, W9 (020 7289 7102)
The Tile Shop: 4-6 Chamberlayne Road, NW10 (020 8968 9497)

Paints
Farrow & Ball: 01202 876141; www.farrow-ball.com
Dulux: 01753 550555; www.dulux.co.uk

Interior designer Amber Galloway took just 10 days to turn a rodent-infested mill into a dreamy home where she combines ancient and modern with flair, says Caroline Phillips MICE scuttled across the floor and water was pouring down the walls when Amber Galloway first saw her new home. “It was infested with rodents,” she says.

She had been in the process of buying two local Fifties cottages, which she had intended to demolish in order to build a Long Island-style clapboard, eco house. “But when I saw this, it was love at first sight,” she says without irony. It is an idyllic 1 8 0 0 s f orme r working mill with a river running through its garden, near Hook in Hampshire.

Galloway, 37, is an interior decorator and director of Global & Gorgeous – an online, mostly bespoke, shopping business selling homeware with a very individual style.

She is a woman who likes to do things differently.

She works on a * aptop in the house or in the garden, where she grows her own vegetables. She chooses everything from paint and furniture to bed linen and china for her decorating clients.

And she lives with her five-year-old son, Oliver, a male au pair and his girlfriend Inge, as well as two Labradors and Harry Potter, the cat. “I like privacy, but this works astonishingly well,” she says.

Even the move to her new home was unconventional. She had been living in Chelsea in a property she had finished renovating two years previously, having bought it in a dilapidated state. In September 2000, she let out her home and rented the bucolic retreat.

“I had 10 days in which to move out of London and make this house habitable,” Galloway explains. “Oliver was tiny, at mouth-level to the exhaust fumes. It was time to go.”

She hired four Polish labourers to live onsite. “My ex-husband, friends and I worked through each night after work. Ten of us stayed here, ripping it apart, blitzing and filling skips.” In record time, they stripped wooden floors, painted others, replaced light fittings and covered the ceilings, walls and woodwork with Farrow & Ball Toffee paint.

“With such low ceilings, it is better not to differentiate the colours,” she says. ” We didn’t fill or prepare the walls, just slapped on the paint. Unusually, I did the paintwork first and found the fabrics afterwards.”

She fitted neutral carpet (” 100 per cent nylon, £6 a metre,” she laughs) and a stripy Roger Oates runner on the stairs. She even got down on her knees and “squished mosaic tiles that were left over from six different jobs” – to create an artistic wet-room floor.

She used plain fabrics for the curtains: James Brindley’s natural pure silk tussah weave at £21 a metre.

“Good curtains are all about interlining and the way you hang them.”

With only a few hours left before moving in, she had to borrow furniture. “I’d rented out my London house furnished,” she says. Six months later, she sold that home and moved her furniture to Hampshire.

The eclectic character of her home comes from the combination of period features with her catholic collection of furniture, pictures and objets.

Her sitting room boasts an enormous open fireplace, traditional chenille armchairs (from a George Smith job lot), a battered Seventies leather Knoll sofa and leather coffee table juxtaposed with the Power Napper, a massive handmade calves’ leather floor cushion she sells for £1,200, and contemporary art from the Serpentine Gallery.

As a contrast, her dining room borders on the tastefully whacky. It has a large circular glass table with a tree trunk as its base; a William Yeoward string console table; an antique candleonly chandelier; c o n t e m p o r a r y t h r e e – m e t a l sconces made by a blacksmith and two 19th century sunburst gilt mirrors with an antique carriage lantern in the middle.

“I never buy objects for their value, just things I like the look of.” Next door, the kitchen has beams and a 19th century fireplace-cum-oven (“When it rains, it buckets down there”) and a wooden settle and clothes pulley, alongside Habitat steel shelves. “I can have 16 people for dinner; we just move between the kitchen and dining areas,” she says.

Upstairs, there are sensational beds everywhere: a Louis XVI-style day bed for her son; a 19th century mahogany with pediment for the au pair; brass in the guest room and a beautiful Empire bed in the master bedroom, where Galloway also has an Empire mahogany wardrobe, antique chaise-longue, 19th century Moroccan marquetry table and a Sixties Teasmade. Also there are framed panels from a decoupage screen she had as an infant. “As a child,” she says, “I’d ask for junk-shop finds rather than Barbie dolls as birthday presents.”

HER eclectic style is emphasised in her bathroom with its freestanding, clawfooted Victorian bath and Conran whiteenamel cube cabinet. Only the guest room is traditional, with a headboard made from French flea-market linen and crowned with a carved wooden mantelpiece, antique knickknacks and Global & Gorgeous muslin cushions and cotton bedcover.

The overall look is stylish and welcoming. “What you have on the walls and floor are immaterial,” she says. “I prefer to spend money on collecting things.

“Sometimes I go into clients’ houses and just move the furniture around, rehang the pictures – and completely transform their places.”

THERE are high-rise council flats, industrial gas turbines and a superstore on his Vauxhall doorstep. But Madonna, Elton John and Elle Macpherson love his home. Once past his oversized metal door, you enter a surreal world: a 26,000sq ft former handbag factory. The factory is now a stylish home, office and gallery, where the contemporary furniture exhibition, Mattia Bonetti: a Collaboration with David Gill, is showing from 10 June.

The space belongs to curator, style guru and furniture and interior designer David Gill, a fortysomething art historian who started his career at Christie’s and specialises in revolutionary furniture designers of the 1920s and 1930s. He is also a patron and promoter of new talent, and works closely with his artists, overseeing the design, execution and interpretation of works.

When Gill first saw the factory it had fallen into disrepair.

“Habitat’s designer, Tom Dixon, worked in part of it. The rest had been empty for years. It was derelict,” says Gill, speaking rapidly in his Spanish accent (of Dutch and Spanish origins, Gill spent his childhood in various European capitals). Dixon did not want to buy the factory and Gill was looking for a place for the overspill furniture from his eponymous Fulham Road gallery, where he sells 20th and 21st century decorative art from around the world.

Gill, a self-made man who has always relied on his good eye and intuition to make money, bought the property in 1995.

“I can’t remember how much I paid for it,” he claims. Two years later he got to work masterminding the building works: gutting the property, but retaining its enormous steel girders and original industrial windows. “I worked with the architect,” he says. “I had clear ideas about volumes, walls, types of doors and finishes.” Even the metal banisters and staircases were commissioned to his specification. “A metal engineer lived in the building for a year and built everything,” he says.

By 1999, Gill had turned the factory into a gallery, open-plan office and 2,000sq ft apartment. In the apartment, he constructed three walls, around which he created an L-shaped reception/dining area, bedroom, guest room, wetroom and industrial kitchen. There are no doors: “They restrict your movement,” says Gill. The apartment has exposed beams, polished concrete floors and high ceilings. The walls are white and the window frames grey. “But colour is important,” he explains. He has added highlights of red, yellow, green, turquoise and burgundy.

Gill calls his flat a “studio-in-progress” displaying art and using furniture in it before selling the items. Richard Synder’s Love Slave Box, for instance, was used to separate the hallway from the dinning area, but was recently bought by a collector, so now the artist’s wooden Magician’s Phoenician Chest has taken its place. “Still not right,” tuts Gill. Nearby are Madonna’s shoes, signed and in a glass case. (“Are you certain that’s my signature?” Madonna teased when she visited.) Above Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Piggy Back sculpture hangs Sarah Lucas’s photograph, Complete Arsehole. Count the naked bodies and breasts in Gill’s flat and you would be there for ages.

The look is idiosyncratic and individual. The eight-foot-high Ink Pad by Abigail Lane hangs above the dining table; beside it, a Virgin Mary with a dagger sticking out of her is wrapped in plastic police tape. Gill has Swiss chalet dining chairs by the late French designer Charlotte Perriand, who during her life worked extensively with Le Corbusier, and a Garouste & Bonetti 12-seater oval dining table with a bronze and scagliola top.

Called Salome, he sells it in the gallery for £9,000, but uses one for his dinner parties. When he wants to invite more people, he takes them downstairs to the gallery. Recently he had a sit-down dinner there for 140.

The reception area has a 1930s Eugene Printz sofa covered in burgundy silk velvet, a 1925 Baroque Venetian stucco chair in green satin and gilt, and a stainless-steel and glass “ring” coffee table. “It was Garouste & Bonetti’s last collaboration,” Gill says.

Art books are piled on three contemporary Grillo Demo console tables that run the length of the windows. There is lots of light: natural, low-level and theatre spots. “Spots are flexible,” Gill says. “They allow me to create my lighting at will.”

IN THE bedroom Gill made his white leather bed. It appears to float, thanks to the fluorescent tubes underneath it and behind the bedhead. “I wanted to create the ultimate reading light,” he explains. The room also has a large flat-screen television, a 1960s fibreglass and brown leather chair, and a vast picture of Michael Jackson by the artist Paul McCarthy, beside the bed.

The wetroom has limestone floors and a stone bench that is “very comfortable to sit on and have a shower”. The concrete walls are painted cream. Gill designed the granite sink and there is an enormous Paul McCarthy latex sculpture of a penis and vagina; “to remind me of where I came from,” laughs Gill.

Everywhere you look, there are collector pieces. The stainlesssteel kitchen boasts a Le Corbusier table, Jean Prouvé chairs and an atmospheric 1950s Serge Mouille black lacquered aluminium mobile light. Even the guest room houses Jean Cocteau ceramics and Man Ray and Brassai photographs.

But Gill feels cramped; next year he plans to build a 6,500sq ft penthouse on his roof. “Ahh, that’ll be such an exciting project,” he concludes happily.

HOW TO GET THE LOOK Mattia Bonetti: a Collaboration with David Gill: original, playful and kitsch furniture by Mattia Bonetti, showing from 10 June to 3 July, at 3 Loughborough Street, SE11 (020 7793 1100).

David Gill Gallery: 20th century and contemporary furniture, objects and jewellery. Period pieces by 1950s designers including Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé.

By appointment at 60 Fulham Road, SW3 (020 7589 5946).

Wetroom: from Fired Earth, which has more than 50 showrooms. Call 01295 814399 for your nearest store.

Lighting: Sally Storey’s design service at John Cullen Lighting. Its showroom can simulate almost any lighting mood you want. 585 King’s Road, SW6 (020 7371 5400).

Kitchen: Alternative Plans supplies contemporary kitchens by Italian manufacturer Boffi and German manufacturer Hacker. Call 020 7228 6460, or visit www.alternative-plans.co.uk.

Bed: for one similar to David Gill’s, try Viaduct, which sells a variety of white leather beds, including three styles from Cappellini. 1-10 Summer’s Street, EC1 (020 7278 8456).

Bathroom: Granite & Marble International, 35 Pensbury Place, Westminster House, SW8 (020 7498 2742).

CHAMPAGNE AS PART of Art Fortnight London, two weeks of events and exhibitions from 21 June to 5 July, which celebrate London as art capital of the world, Homes & Property is offering a pair of tickets to one of the exclusive events – A Collector at Home, a champagne reception hosted by David Gill, dealer, curator and collector, in his gallery in south London. The event will take place on 25 June from 7pm to 9pm.

Gill’s collection includes a number of important works by contemporary artists, including Paul McCarthy (famed for his Blockhead installation outside Tate Modern last year) and the latest collection of art furniture by Mattia Bonetti.

How to enter: Send your name, address, and contact phone number on a postcard to: H&P Evening, Art Fortnight London, 44 Duke’s Street, St James’s, London SW1Y 6DD, by Wednesday 9 June. The winner will be notified by Friday 11 June.

PAINT specialist Joa Studholme and interior designer and house surgeon Suzy Maas came together to provide a radical, low-budget makeover for a tired two-bedroom basement flat in Kensington. Previously valued at £400,000, by property expert and local estate agent Eve Wilton of Aylesfords, what would this flat be worth after its expert makeover? Read on…

When Joa and Suzy visited the flat in a small cul de sac off Kensington Church Street, they discovered a dowdy, dated property. Joa says: “It was so Eighties, full of rag-rolling, skyandclouds trompe l’oeil on the hall ceiling, gilded cornices and stencilling everywhere, with hideous, highly polished orangey furniture. The doors and cupboards had tarnished brass fittings, the fireplace was a morbid black marble, and the sofa was covered in blue satin brocade.”

Now the flat is light, bright and fabulously contemporary, and appears much larger. A great result for only £15,000. How did they do it? Joa works for paint maker Farrow & Ball. Her job is to advise homeowners on paint colours, finishes and wallpaper combinations.

“If someone asks for ‘neutral’, I look at their clothes for clues,” she says. Joa herself wears Chinese Blue and Breakfast Room Green vintage garb. She charges £90 an hour or £500 per day – with the flat, she took only two hours to work out an entire colour scheme.

Suzy is managing director of The Final Touch, which renovates properties for sale or rental. She does everything from large structural changes and clearing clutter to redecorating, or replacing the garden fence. She charges £75 for a consultation or £475 a day. Suzy draws as much on her own experience of multiple house-building and moving as on her training as an interior designer. Now, propert ies she tackles sell for up to 15 per cent above their original asking price.

At the flat, Joa zipped through the rooms, painting over the furniture and woodwork with Farrow & Ball’s specialist paints. She skilfully blended colours to give an illusion of larger spaces and, very cleverly, used strips of wallpaper to back bookshelves to save time and money.

Suzy, meanwhile, whizzed through spring cleaning, substituting dingy light fittings, cleaning white carpets and making a huge impression with chocolate-brown faux suede re-upholstery, and pink satin cushions. A small and charming French antique mirror, costing £40, was painted white and placed above a bureau to add a classy touch. She has an impressive contacts book and can save a client hours by knowing just where to buy the right item.

Generous pinch-pleated curtains in rich mocha faux suede were a bargain at £8.50 a metre. New door furniture in fresh glass was delightful, as were the modern stand a rd lamps. She didn’t buy any large furniture, instead she painted what was there. “The one thing we needed was light. Just exchanging dusty, heavy nets for cream Cosmo blinds gives a pretty diffused light,” she says.

Joa also went for light, but not by using white, as many of us would. “You can’t use overt white in a basement. You have to go with what nature gives you, otherwise it looks wrong,” she explains. “And don’t paint ceilings white because your eye is drawn to the contrast, and take wall colour over the cornice to give height.”

SHADES of the colour palette used in the hall were brought into the drawing room to create continuity. The Farrow & Ball paints, with their famous clotted cream, tactile chalky finish, provide their own expensive, contemporary effect. She chose Off White, with a contrastingly darker tone on the bookcase and an even darker one on the fireplace. “The walls, skirting and window frames are the same colour.

It makes a room look bigger.”

A similar deft approach gave the gloomy master bedroom an uptodate, Swedish look. Its cold lavender walls were exchanged for the warmth of Pale Powder, a calm shade of soft blue/turquoise. The cupboards were painted to ” disappear” and the 1980s yellow-with-ahintof-blue furniture transformed by Off White. Shutters were painted with the same Pale Powder and Suzy hung pretty white muslin strips over the windows from discreet rods. The wall behind the bedroom shelves was treated to the same trick with strips of wallpaper, this time in romantic Ivy Paper.

The small, dark bathroom’s makeover was masterly. No one without Joa’s knowledge would have used the striking Silvergate ( washable) wallpaper, Light Grey paint on the woodwork or the ceiling’s Slipper Satin. “Large patterns work very well in small spaces, and the woodwork in gloss is very contemporary – as well as practical, and a contrast to the matt wallpaper. When there’s no natural light, it works to use stronger, darker materials. But this bathroom opens onto the hall and is too small for a colour change.” So she used the same shades.

The hallway, like so many London flats, was long, dark and narrow. Now it is an exciting space, thanks to the clever use of neutral colours – from Slipper Satin to Mouse’s Back. “The lobby is darker, so that the eye reads the lighter hall as bigger and brighter,” says Joa.

Suzy added the finishing touch with economical cream runners from Habitat laid on the wood floors. “A lot of house doctors put in oat carpets, calico curtains and magnolia walls,” concludes Suzy. “But they lose the personality and oomph of a property, which can mean that it doesn’t stand up to the competition.”

As an infant, Anna Rose O’Sullivan had pigeon toes – now she is a pirouetting princess. Caroline Phillips reports

When Anna Rose O’Sullivan was 10 months old, her mother, Jacinta, feared that her daughter might never walk properly. The infant’s feet turned inwards and she walked on her ankles. Jacinta’s mind was filled with visions of splints, braces and corrective shoes. In severe cases of pigeon toes, she discovered later, remedial surgery is required.

This weekend, Anna Rose, now aged 10, will dance the lead role in the London Children’s Ballet revival of A Little Princess – standing on her tip-toes and turning out her feet perfectly for the demanding part of Sara Crewe, a little girl left orphaned, penniless and at the mercy of the wicked Miss Minchin. She dances for most of the 90-minute performance.

“One week, we rehearsed for five hours every day,” says Anna Rose. She has also just taken over as Cosette in the long-running musical Les Miserables.

“It’s quite a big part,” says Anna Rose, proudly.

The sitting room of the O’Sullivans’ modern Uxbridge home is filled with silver ballet trophies.

“Upstairs,” says Anna Rose, “I have 24 ballet medals.”

Pigeon toes – also called in-toeing – occurs when the front of the foot is turned to face the other foot, and – like bowlegs, flat feet or knock-knees – is a common condition in children.

“Pigeon toes is a general term. It’s nearly as unspecific as `backache’,” explains John Strachan, who worked as orthopaedic surgeon to the Royal Ballet for 31 years. “It usually has postural or anatomical roots. For example, if the hip isn’t positioned correctly, the foot will turn in to compensate. The toes themselves aren’t usually deformed. It’s just a description of gait and the position of the feet.”

Rarely, the condition is caused by a twist in the thigh or shin bone, or an abnormal curvature of the foot (metatarsus adductus). In most cases of in-toeing, the problem corrects itself naturally by the time the child reaches school age – which was the case with Anna Rose. As muscles strengthen and the bones grow, they straighten out.

Nobody knows for sure why the condition occurs. One theory is that it is the result of crowding in the uterus. When a baby’s hips, shins or feet are squashed in utero, they may turn in as they develop. This is more likely if the mother is carrying her first child or twins, or has reduced amniotic fluid.

“Anna Rose was a big baby – nine and a half pounds,” says Jacinta.

Generally, in-toeing doesn’t affect athletic ability. But, in serious cases, it can cause a child to trip and fall. In the past, special shoes, splints and leg braces were used, but they are rarely prescribed now, as they have had little effect in speeding up the natural, slow improvement.

Typically, in-toeing appears between the age of a year and 18 months, when the infant begins to stand. Jacinta noticed the problem when Anna Rose started to walk.

“Two of her adult relations suffer from it, on both sides of the family,” she says. “So I was terrified it was going to be a permanent condition.”

“If there’s an anatomical problem, it could be genetically linked, but this is rare,” says Strachan. “For Anna Rose, it sounds more like a coincidence.”

Jacinta took her daughter to the family doctor. There, her fears were dispelled. Anna Rose’s in-toeing wasn’t severe.

“The doctor thought her knee turned in, making her walk like that,” says Jacinta. “He said it might correct itself when she came out of nappies – because wearing them distorts the way you stand. Then, I worried about it cosmetically. It was very unsightly.”

The GP suggested that Anna Rose should wear sturdy boots with ankle support and an arch to strengthen her insteps. He also recommended regular foot massages and advised Jacinta to take her to ballet classes as soon as possible.

“Every time I changed her nappies, I’d massage her feet from inside ankle to toe for a few minutes,” says Jacinta.

Just before Anna Rose’s third birthday, Jacinta started taking her to ballet twice a week.

“Standing in an out position helps strengthen the muscles and makes your feet and legs strong,” says Strachan. “Ballet helps as long as there’s no underlying anatomical problem – which is generally the case. It’s important because the child is doing something enjoyable, but learning to walk with the feet facing out.”

Earlier this year, Jacinta took Anna Rose to a ballet physiotherapist. Ever greater dancing demands are being made of her and Jacinta wanted reassurance that her daughter had no anatomical problems that might one day prevent her from dancing.

The physiotherapist stretched and manipulated her feet at length, then declared her body to be perfect for ballet.

“More than anything,” says Anna Rose, “I want to be a prima ballerina with the Royal Ballet when I grow up.”

A Little Princess is at the Peacock Theatre, Sadler’s Wells from tonight until Sunday.

WHEN Ian and Claire Hogarth bought their South Kensington basement flat in 2002, it had not been touched since 1936. The peeling walls dripped with damp – a fan was on permanently to alleviate the smell – and it had concrete floors, but no telephone line nor television aerial.

In just four months Ian turned the £350,000 property into a bright, stylish and ultramodern space – now housing the couple, their five- and eight-year-old children and Hogarth Architects, Ian’s practice.

Measuring just 1,475 sq ft, this is compact living. But Ian waved his architectural wand and made the flat lighter and seemingly bigger. He demolished the supporting wall of the 80ft corridor: “A big statement,” says Ian, in his Yorkshire accent. “But the structural opening allowed me to move the kitchen into the corridor and make the living area open plan.” He also removed part of the roof at the back, creating a courtyard and natural light for the bedrooms. “I wanted the space to be sensual and light.”

He made a “Blackpool illuminations” corridor – using a playful lighting feature that alters its colour from green to purple and blue – and put an ever-changing sequence of rainbow lights in the children’s bedroom, illuminations under sofas and pink fluorescent tubes behind the bath panel.

“One Cardio System computer-controlled button operates the lights, heating, music and security,” laughs Claire, a former picture editor. “You can access it from anywhere in the world with a mobile. Ian’s still experimenting with different settings and colours.”

Going further in the name of big, bright and light, Ian introduced glossy white rubber floors throughout and white Corian kitchen surfaces with a white basin (all for visual continuity), and painted everything white to reflect the light. Even the bespoke plywood and white formica dining table was put at the window as a “light bouncer” and the grey – and therefore light-sapping – plasma screen was carefully concealed.

Everything is hidden behind glossy white doors, enhancing the illusion of space.

Shiny white-lacquer IKEA cupboards run the length of the corridor, including one that is set on its side above the recessed mirror over the breakfast bar.

Until Ian moved his office into the flat, one of these cupboards acted as his workspace.

Introducing warmth was also important in transforming what had been a dingy and cold dungeon-like space. Ian lay expensive underfloor heating everywhere. “We keep it on permanently,” reveals Claire. For the living area, Ian commissioned supremo fireplace architect Henry Harrison (the Platonic Fireplace Company man who invented pebbles as fuel) to design a feature “shelf fire”. It complements the simplicity of the shelf of green slate salvaged from a derelict building in Cardiff. White pebble-effect wallpaper is hung alongside it.

The flat is a place full of surprises. In Ian’s home- office, you find employees, papers, computers, showreels and plans.

But past the children’s quirky bedroom “pavement wall” – made of lights with blue glass lenses set into concrete – you see dinosaurs through ship’s portholes and a seascape mural.

The living area is cool and calm with white walls and white Panton chairs. But it is also where Ian meets clients for presentations, projecting his radical refurbishments via the plasma screen.

But this room has a further surprise: unscrew the table’s legs, lift off the table top and push the beautiful low-slung SCP orange sofas to the sides – and the area becomes the couple’s party venue.

IN THE clean, corridor kitchen you find blue and orange tiles, builder-built brown and turquoise units and classic Bombo bar stools. But one step further and you are in the couples “bordello” bedroom. “It’s a night space,” Ian explains. “It is the darkest room, so we decorated it highly.” Previously, it was white with white shag pile but last year the couple painted its ceiling fuchsia – and hung Florence Broadhurst 19th century revival wallpaper featuring galloping horses on reflecting silver paper. The room also has purple chiffon curtains and a Maisonette painting-by-numbers screen of flowers above a purple B&B Italia bedhead. “I dyed that. It’s the only thing I did in the flat,” admits Claire.

Much has been imaginatively achieved with more style than shekels. The Jacuzzi bath in the children’s bathroom was rescued off a friend’s rubbish heap; the mosaic tiles in the couple’s wet room came from bankrupt stock – and because they ran out of red ones, Ian finished the wall with a white mosaic cross.

In their bedroom, IKEA mirror cupboards were covered with sticky plastic film to look like sandblasted glass. “We had a limited budget and ran out of money,” explains Ian. Claire adds: “Now we hire the flat out for fashion shoots.”

Before the couple bought the apartment, they spent four years trying to acquire an enormous subterranean council garage in west London. They had obtained planning permission to build a lateral flat in it. “I still hanker after that space,” says Ian.

Claire replies, pointedly: “Maybe we will get it when we have sold this place.”

“Oh, are we on the market?” asks Ian, surprised.

The completed flat has recently been valued at a cool £750,000.

HOW TO GET THE LOOK
Ian Hogarth Hogarth Architects, 61 Courtfield Gardens SW5 0NQ (020 7565 8366; info@hogartharchitects .co.uk; www.hogarth architects.co.uk).
Intergrated Intelligence, for computer-controlled lighting and other house systems (07956 827586).
The Platonic Fireplace Company, for fireplaces (020 8891 5904;www.platonic fireplaces.co.uk).
Minimalist pioneer Henry Harrison sells modern fireplaces and undertakes one-off commissions (020 8891 5904)
Borderline wallpaper from Florence Broadhurst (020 7823 3567)
Maisonette – for similar paint-by-numbers pictures to the one featured in the Hogarth bedroom- (020 8964 8444; www.maisonette.uk.com)
To hire out your home for fashion shoots, contact Lavish Locations (020 8742 2992; www.lavishlocations.com)
Lasarcroft, for rubber floors (01482 229119)
For the SCP, Michael Sodeau orange sofa, call 020 7739 1869.

WHEN Lucho Brieva first set eyes on the disused office block, he knew he had to have it. He was looking for a place to house a metal workshop and the overflow of guests from the St John’s Wood home he shared with his then wife and mentor, singer Chrissie Hynde. He wanted somewhere to work, combining metal and glass to create pieces such as dining tables, candelabra and even showers.

In 1998, the three-storey Kilburn property was “a bargain” at £700,000. Set in a secluded courtyard, the 10,000sq ft Victorian building was originally constructed as stables and a railway depot. When he bought it, it was in a parlous state with smashed walls, broken floors and dangling neon lights. But it had the space, off-street parking and location he wanted. There were no planning objections to his proposed change of use, and so, a few weeks later, Colombian-born Lucho, 38, set to work with three labourers.

Brieva – who trained as an architect and worked as a boat interior designer before becoming a singer, philosopher and metal artist – decided to gut the property himself. He redid the wiring, plumbing and plasterwork, introduced soundproofing to make way for a state-of-the-art recording studio on the top floor, constructed partitions in the open-plan apartment, made a metal workshop and gallery on the ground floor and laid new floorboards and wooden floors. The project took two years and cost £180,000 (the building is now valued at £1.6 million). “It wasn’t stressful,” maintains Brieva, “because I wasn’t living on site.”

Then, in 2001, he split up from Hynde. “I decided to move into the apartment. We’d moved home every year for six years. Chrissie was always looking for the perfect house,” explains Brieva. “I got exhausted and hated maintaining huge properties. So now I like having a compact, manageable home.” The apartment is about 2,000sq ft. If he tires of “compact” living, he can go upstairs to the recording studio, where he is working on an album with Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera, or downstairs to the gallery, which he uses for art shows, parties, lectures, dinners and as a library.

The apartment is a peaceful, airy, open-plan space with earthy and neutral colours and dark wooden Junckers floors throughout. The look is East meets quirky West.

There are cream sofas, 19th century French radiators, a piano and a wall of windows hung with wooden Luxaflex blinds to hide the railway. And Brieva’s imaginative creations – from a steel-frame dining table with a Venetian glass top lit underneath by tiny ruby bulbs to a kitchen splashback of glasslike polycarbonate illuminated alternately by pink, blue or yellow back-lighting. “Lighting is incredibly important,” explains Brieva. “At the flick of a switch, you can visually change the size of a room and create a space that is sensual, mystical or a workspace.”

He designed a kitchen at one end of the apartment, a sitting room at the other and constructed a low “wall” of painted cupboards to define the bedroom area. He then fashioned a Japanese-style screen from steel frames backed with polycarbonate to partition off the bathroom. There are no internal doors apart from this one. He decided on the layout by using his architectural experience and “intuition”. “I wanted the energy to circulate,” explains Brieva, a former martial arts champion. “I used proportions that are based on sacred geometry from ancient civilisations.”

Amazingly, Brieva made all the fixtures and furniture, except the sofas. His bathroom is like a solo art show. A font-style MC Stone basin of limestone sits on a square, red light-box, just waiting to be transferred to a modern cathedral. (“The circular basin placed on a square base symbolises the marriage of heaven and earth,” says Brieva.) He has encased a double-ended Bette bath in a front panel of milky Perspex, and lit the marble walls of his shower from behind the rock. “It looks beautiful and makes the stone warm.” Only the lavatory remains unreconstructed.

Turning his hand to kitchen-making, Brieva put sapele wood work surfaces and eye-catching copper doors on cheap units. He fitted a chessboard floor made of slate framed with cherry wood. He continued through the sitting room, fashioning iron dagger-shaped wall lights and personally constructing a painted MDF sideboard and chunky floating bookshelves. Outside he created a Piranesi-inspired wrought-iron balcony for his bedroom window.

Inside the bedroom – a monastic, calming place with rough cream plasterwork walls, Moroccan lanterns and Ganesh (god of business) beside the bed – Brieva made something surprising. He pulls forward a large Sufi oil painting of a sacred lotus and the birth canal to reveal a cupboard… containing 40 gleaming knives for his martial arts fights. “Lucho means ‘I fight’ in Spanish,” he laughs. He needed that warrior spirit to turn a lousy office into a beautiful work/play/live space.

GET THE LOOK
Lucho Brieva: open by appointment, the gallery shows Brieva’s work and he undertakes private commissions such as his dining table with its Renaissance pillar-style copper legs embedded with blue glass (£2,000), giant candelabra (£2,500) and iron and illuminated glass-framed shower (£3,500). Call 020 8960 2794.
MDF shelves and cupboards: John Murray, known for excellence in design and craftsmanship (07773 361568).
Lighting: at-the-touch-of-a-button dimming and pre-set lighting scene selection from one stylish wall control by Lutron Lighting Control, changing mood and visual space (0800 282107).
Cast-iron reclamation radiators: Brondesbury Architectural (020 7328 0820).
Wooden blinds: Luxaflex (0161 432 5303).
Bathroom: MC Stone for Bette double-ended Starlet bath and font limestone basins (020 7289 7102).

LAST week, Jane Keisner was up a ladder on a building site wearing a mink coat, hard hat and wellies. She and her business partner, Joanna Lindsay, are known to their clients as the Trinny and Susannah of the decorating world: bossy, vibrant, formidably energetic, fixers of all things domestic and blessed with a strong sense of style.

The duo can unpack a kitchen, find, mend, build or unbuild, design, project manage, make a bed or scrub a floor – they can even hire you a good nanny.

They are also peacemakers, often being called in by desperate clients on the point of murdering a builder or demanding a divorce over disputed curtain swatches. The pair bring harmony, but not by imposing their own sense of style: they work with a client’s own taste, whether that is for the chintzy or the minimal.

And they claim to save their clients money. Managing a project yourself can prove costly when you don’t know where to go for bargains and have to buy everything retail. The two Js, perhaps uniquely, pass on their trade discounts to their clients.

I called them in myself recently when my home makeover was about 85 per cent finished.

I had spent hours fondling Valli & Valli door furniture and marrying Majestic shower doors with Bette baths, and so many days deciding with whom I should sleep (Bart Halpern bedroom fabrics won me over) that I was in danger of paying council tax at the fabric store.

But I was also overloaded (is life really meaningless without a Gaggenau steam oven?), and could no longer see the designer wood for the (maple, oak or walnut?) trees. I lacked the confidence to finish the project myself and longed for help. The two Js came to my rescue.

The two women arrived at my north London home, Jane, 42, decorated expensively in Prada and Gucci, Joanna, 36, more high-street in Warehouse and Zara: two different approaches, both yielding terrific results.

They started working together in 1998. Before that, Jane was a currency dealer turned door-todoor speciality bread seller; Joanna cut her teeth building a gift business.

The two of them charge though my house passing sentence on each room: that desk would have to be moved; a plain blind would make this room look bigger; Andrew Martin’s mushroom fabric would look divine here; change that armchair; put battery-controlled Velux blinds in that room and a touch of taupe in the other. How about a Saniflo lavatory in this cupboard? Jane downed coffee on the move, Joanna scribbled notes.

And then they turn their attention to me. They had picked up on my taste the moment they walked through the door and were so spot on. I had already on order many of the items they suggested that I buy (except it took me months to track them down).

The pair also had suggestions to achieve the results I wanted in a more economical fashion.

Joanna takes out her phone and it looks as though they might be phoning each other, but Joanna is getting an estimate from the joiner.

Their enthusiasm for my home comes thick and fast. “Oooh, what beautiful carpets, lavender-tinged Wilton,” murmurs Jane, stroking my mousecoloured carpet appreciatively.

“Gorgeous,” concurs Joanna. “And those stunning recessed downlighters must be by Candela.”

Their own style is low-key and neutral, one of understated elegance. But they are adaptable. “We draw the line at cut-off curtains, or orange walls with purple spots,” says Jane, entering my daughter’s bedroom and encountering its blue-and-white spotted Cath Kidston carpet, raspberry walls and azure floral blinds.

Joanna and Jane both attend the initial client meeting. For the first consultation and ensuing estimates they charge £500. Thereafter, they charge a flat fee, calculated on their instinct for the job’s length and “Ikea has a table that would look fantastic in this kitchen,” says Joanna. “Otherwise our joiner could make you one with a walnut top and steel base. Or have you seen … ?” She makes a mobile call. cost. That usually works out at about 10 to 15 per cent of the project. Recently they charged £30,000 for changes to a suspended gym over an indoor pool in Belgravia, but just before that they were able to manage the complete makeover of a Muswell Hill flat for just £2,500.

“We hate to spend people’s money unnecessarily,” says Jane. “If we can find a fabric for £40 that looks the same as one for £150, we’ll always go for the cheaper option.”

For one job they were given carte blanche at a St John’s Wood Victorian villa – even down to commissioning fine art from Cork Street with individual pictures costing up to £50,000. Then there was the Leicester Square flat where they worked at 4.30am because delivery lorries were not allowed into the area after 5am.

The two sometimes have a less happy relationship with builders. One got so exasperated with them he walked off the site and went home, complaining that his wife nagged him less than Joanna did. “But I called him up and nagged him some more and he came back and finished the job,” she giggles.

As the pair leave my home, their promises to send me catalogues, swatches and people are soon being delivered – even before they get to the end of my road, their suppliers and contacts begin calling me to make appointments for quotes.