How To Renovate

EP45 Why Kate Watson-Smyth Isn't A Fan Of Slow Renovating & How You Can Speed Yours Up

• Tash South • Season 1 • Episode 45

Share episode

Send us a text

This week, I was lucky enough to interview Kate Watson-Smyth. If you love interiors, you’ll undoubtedly know about her! 

Kate is a renowned interiors author, journalist, podcaster and consultant on all matters interior design, and the founder of the award-winning blog Mad About The House, which can now be found on substack. 

Kate wrote an article in The Times that caught my eye - about why she takes no pleasure in renovating and needs it done fast—which really made me smile, because there does seem to be a trend for slow renovating at the moment. And since all I do is to help people get through their renovations on time, on budget and with as little stress as possible, I thought I just had to have Kate on the podcast to talk more about this. 

So in this episode we dive into this topic that we both feel strongly about—why we’re not fans of slow renovating and how you can speed yours up. 

Join us inside for tonnes of useful info on just where to spend your time when renovating, and you can steal Kate’s renovation wisdom and knowledge too.

See you inside! 

Mentioned in this episode:
Find out more about Kates Interior Design Retreats here:
https://katewatsonsmyth.substack.com/p/announcing-design-retreats-in-piemonte

Read Kate on Substack here:
https://katewatsonsmyth.substack.com/

*******************


Hi I'm your host, Tash South I'm an Interior Designer and Renovation Consultant.
Each episode of How To Renovate is short, but brimming with practical advice to help you manage your renovation project with confidence and success.

Grab some more renovation advice & free resources and become part of the South Place Studio Renovation Community at
https://www.southplacestudio.com/freebies

Everything I teach about renovation falls within my Five Pillar Process for A Successful Renovation, to learn more about the process, head to
https://www.southplacestudio.com/pillars


Or if you want to get social, you can find us here:

Instagram: @southplacestudio

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/south-place-studio

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/southplacestudio

Speaker 1:

Hello, hello everybody, and welcome back to the how to Renovate podcast. Today I have an absolutely brilliant guest with me. Kate Watson-Smyth is a renowned interiors author, journalist, podcaster and consultant on all matters interior design, and she is the founder of the award-winning blog Mad About the House, which can now be found on Substack. I love Kate's wit, wisdom and no-nonsense approach to interiors, which have also made her one of the most trusted voices in design. Kate's work actually inspired me to start my own blog all those years ago, and she has always been so insightful, helpful and friendly whenever we've met at events or crossed paths.

Speaker 1:

If you love interiors, you'll undoubtedly have heard about Kate, whether from her best-selling books, her iconic blog or her incredible eye for making a home both stylish and truly liveable. And today we're diving into a topic we both feel strongly about, and that's why we're not fans of slow renovating and how you can speed yours up. Hi, Kate, welcome, welcome to the how to Renovate podcast. We're so happy to have you here. So you have been in interior journalism for quite a while, and so I think let's start there. Let's start with a little bit about your background, your family and how you found yourself to be in interior journalism and everything else that you do in terms of interiors well, depends how far back you want to go.

Speaker 2:

But, um, basically I I trained as a news reporter and I worked on local papers, um, and then I moved to London to and the way you did it back then in the 90s was you would try and get freelance shifts, so you would get a day shift here and then you would hope very much they would ask you back for another one or you know, you would get a day shift somewhere else. So I started doing that and I did it basically between the Telegraph and the Guardian and then I got a job as a night reporter on the Independent and I did that for nine months and then finally the person who'd been the night reporter before me, who'd gone to the day reporter, then left to be a travel writer. So you sort of moved along the slots and I got the day reporter job in 95, 6. It was a while ago and anyhow. So I did that and I was a news reporter, which I didn't love. I've always sort of liked the writing more and I used to have and I used to sort of quite enjoy rewriting the PA wires and the Reuters wires, to you know, rather than sort of writing news reporting, news stories, which are very straight, if you like.

Speaker 2:

And after the birth of my first child, who's now 24 or about to be, I went freelance and it was one of those things. I was working at a magazine doing two or three days a week. Someone got in touch with me from the Independent, who I knew, and said could I write something for the features pages, which is what I'd sort of always wanted to do? And so I jumped on it and did that and then, much like the news reporting shifts, I was asked to do another one and another one and and I sort of wormed my way in to the property pages, which back then this was 2001-2, uh was a sort of 68 page pullout every week. It was masses of. It needed masses of copy, there was huge amounts to write and I was writing about and in fact it's a feature I still do now which um on the blog was called house hunter and on substack is called design decoded.

Speaker 2:

It was about houses on the market and and how they look and the. The reason I write about houses that are on the market is because they're not, they've not been styled for editorial magazines, so it's not in their interest to take the spotlights out of the ceiling or to remove the loo flush because you're hoping to sell the house. Therefore, you want the people that look at the photographs. Of course it's tidied up and might be a little bit styled, but you need people to see what the house is like. So I've always written about it from that point of view and when I started doing it at the Independent back then we didn't really do the inside, it was very much. This is on the market. It was all about the curb appeal.

Speaker 2:

But I mean, the Internet was, you know, not not people were just getting into it, and so the postman used to turn up every week with armfuls of glossy brochures. I really hated it and I stored them all in a filing cabinet and then I'd sort of fill the filing cabinet and, you know, get rid of them all I'm assuming it was recycling and started then and then start again and then gradually they went online. So you know, it became easier and easier. But that was how I started writing features. And then, of course, you know, in that, in that classic sort of trend way you know, we went up to the top, I was writing two features. It was a week, it was lovely. And then, you know, the Internet started to have an effect on newspaper sales and that pullout went down to 48 pages, to 32, to 24, to 16. Eventually it got pulled inside the paper. By this time it's 2012. I've got pretty much no work. So I set up the blog Mad About the House and then, you know, carried on from there.

Speaker 1:

So gosh wow, what a story. I mean, mad About the House is actually one of the blogs that really inspired me to stop blogging all those years ago, and I think it's just one of those ones that, no matter who you speak to, everyone seems to know about it and it's just, you know, it's kind of one of the classics. It's been around for so long. But it's kind of one of the classics, it's been around for so long but it was.

Speaker 2:

It was one of the first. I mean, there were a few people who started in 2009 Will Taylor, who's now gone to America, and Kimberly Duran, who wrote Swoonworthy, and, I think, kate Baxter, who now lives in Manchester. They'd come in slightly earlier than me, they were younger than me, um and but though, and I think, there were fashion blogs around, and it was back at at that stage where some of the magazines were very cross about the fashion bloggers turning up and getting seats, and they were like oh, these just. I mean, vogue wrote a very sniffy piece about it.

Speaker 2:

I think you know these young girls who just parading around in nice clothes, and then, you know, the next thing that happens is Dolce Gabbana had given all the fashion bloggers front row seats with a little table for their laptops, because they knew that they could get to the audience more quickly. I mean, it made complete sense. You know, back then, vogue had a three month lead time, as do all the glossies. So if you're showing a fashion show, but you're, you're showing it to people who can't show it to their readers for three months, and yet there's someone in front of an engaged audience exactly.

Speaker 2:

Why not do it? So the fashion blog idea had been well-established. I came in in 2012, and I remember talking to someone who was then doing the PR for Ikea and I remember him saying to me you'll do well, because there aren't many interiors bloggers. He said there are some in Sweden. They're ahead of us. I think it was Emma's blog with the double G. She was kind of the starter, the OG of it, and so I was.

Speaker 2:

I was lucky with the timing and I've also always remained very firmly in my lane. Um, you know, I don't write about fashion and makeup and shoes and lifestyle. I write about interiors. That's what I do and it's partly because that's what I know about and I don't. You know, I think the fashion world can be tricky. I don't want to, you know, have videos of me in clothes and people going, oh, she's really fat, she's really old. I don't like it. You know, I don't need that, so I'm just not. I'm not going there. Um, and and I think it's also true you know, it's as true now as it was back then when I started I think it's a good idea find your niche, find what you know about, write about that and become the person who people go to for that thing.

Speaker 1:

So I've tried to yeah that's amazing and such great advice. So the reason I asked you to come onto the podcast is because I saw an article you wrote about the trend of renovating really slowly, so slow renovations, and it really made me smile because you were so honest in it and you said well, that's just the worst thing I can think of is taking a renovation so slow. So I thought we could focus on talking about that today. And obviously there are lots of reasons why people do slow renovations financials, usually the biggest one, but I would love to get into that more today. So I've read that you've renovated six houses over 25 years and that's including your accidental upsize in Italy, which looks amazing and sounds amazing. So if anyone hasn't seen that, do go look that up. But I think we both agree that renovations don't need to take years and I just want to know kind of why. Why do you believe that slow renovating isn't always the best approach? And you know what are the biggest misconceptions people have about taking their time?

Speaker 2:

Well, I wrote that article. There was a piece in House and Garden which said you know, let's take joy in the slow renovation. We can make better decisions, we might even enjoy the process. And you know, maybe it's all a bit raw for me because I've just done two in the last two years and I was like there's no joy. There is no joy. And I can't help thinking that most people, if they had the money, they wouldn't take time. If you had the money, you'd move out and you'd do it. So I think you know this is not I mean. So I then wrote a slightly grumpy riposte to it.

Speaker 2:

I was talking to a friend of mine who works for the Times, katrina Burrows. She's an editor and I, and we we're, we're of an age and we send each other texts every couple of days going what are you cross about today? Well, here's today's list of cross things. And so I said have you seen this? I'm so furious, I hate slow renovating, I don't want to live in a horrible house, I want it done now. And she said oh well, you know, why don't you write about it? So that that was my riposte, which I then toned down and and wrote more, I hope about a list of practical things you can do so we can get on to that.

Speaker 2:

But my main point was that you know, I I do not find joy in living in a building site. Maybe it's my age, but I mean I've done it when my boys were, you know, two and four, and I remember sort of having the kitchen done and having to stop them falling through the floorboards and stop them putting, you know, drills in their mouths and you know, all the toys were dusty and you couldn't cook. I do not find joy in that, you know. That said, I don't camp, so so this kind of temporary living is it's not for me, um, but so you know there's that If I move in somewhere, I want it done how I want it done, and I want it done very quickly because as much as my life and career is writing about interior design and helping people, I want to do it and move on and start living in this beautiful space I've created, where you know I know where my shoes go, I know where the Tupperware lives, you know my sofa is. I'm surrounded by colours that make me feel happy. So there's an element to you know you have to get through the renovation to come out the other side into the house. You want, and I want, to do that quickly.

Speaker 2:

You know, I remember in this house, for various reasons, we had to do things in what might be perceived as the wrong order. So we did the sitting room and then we had to do the kitchen, which had been delayed, which meant we had to cook in the sitting room. So we had a little temporary gas burner and one of those little ovens that you can buy that will microwave and cook things, and we had it set up on my desk, actually where I'm talking to to you now, and we'd had to paint and do everything else, because that was just the way it was working and when you live in it you have to sort of pivot a bit more. I remember my son coming home one night from the pub and going brilliant, I'm going to fry eggs tonight. I was like, maybe you are not frying eggs, I've just had these walls painted. You will scramble, there will be no frying, um. So you know, I mean it's, it's all of that. You think I just, I just want it done. So I mean I will. Also, let's address the budget, because of course, you know, most people can't afford to do everything in one go, and I get that. This is not about saying come in and throw money at it. I think when you buy whenever whenever I've bought houses with significantly large mortgages, but that's a different issue I've kind of known whether I'm upsizing or downsizing, you know, if we can sell our current place for this and we buy for that, that will give us X amount for the renovations and you know, maybe that's not enough to do the whole lot in one go, but maybe that will allow us to do the kitchen and bathroom and we'll do the painting ourselves. And then, you know, another day we'll do the loft or the garden or whatever it may be. So there is a certain amount of planning you can do in advance.

Speaker 2:

My tip has always been start with the bathroom, which you know may feel counterintuitive, but the thing about having a nice bathroom is that you know when the whole of the rest of your house is full of builders and dirt and dust a there's a locking door, so you can just go in there and lock the door and have a cry and b you can be clean yourself. And if you can be clean yourself and you've had a small cry and you've had a private space with the door locked, you feel better able to deal with the rest of it. You know, when you you, when you're in the process of doing it and you can't even have a wee in peace because there's no door on the loo or it doesn't flush or it's not plugged in, you know that that's just miserable. So I always would start with that. And that came in our first flat because we'd done the bathroom last and we didn't do it till I was eight and a half months pregnant and the builders turned up. How long do you think this, this bathroom, will take? We take about a month. And I went oh, ok, right. And then he looked at me and he went why when you do? And I went oh, any minute now, literally after lunch that day there were four of them. We went from one to four. It was done in a week. I think they were so frightened that they were going to have to deliver the baby. So I think you know it's planning which can help you.

Speaker 2:

But I think the key point is when you know you're moving and you know what your pot of money is, whatever it is, you can start to plan. And if you have no money, you can. You know, and I've done. I've done this so many times. You know I'm not big on the DIY now, but I have sanded floors, I've painted walls, I've put up shelves. You know I've done all that.

Speaker 2:

And if you're moving into a house where you can't afford to do the kitchen straight away and you can't afford to do the bathroom, you can paint the sitting room and you can paint it all out in a sort of soft white if you want just to start with, you know you can paint over wallpaper just to get yourself going a bit. You know there's a there's a lot of temporary things you can do. There's a lot of temporary things you can do. What I can't do, because it saps my soul, is live in a space where I hate it so utterly and completely that it's going to make me depressed while I'm saving. So I am a fan of a kind of temporary workaround.

Speaker 2:

So you know, it might just be a neutral paint everywhere. It might be something like changing the kitchen doors or just changing the handles and making sure you will use those handles later. And you can do a lot with grout cleaner to tidy that up, even if you hate the tiles and actually on the shower, change the shower head, because they're all standard fittings. They're going by a new shower head with no lime scale on it and at least that is helping and treat yourself to a nice fluffy towel. So you know, do what you can around the edges, do some temporary decor and, in a way, look for the furniture.

Speaker 2:

You think you know if you need to buy furniture, because if you've got that sofa in place you know you might have to wrap it up when the work is going on to protect it. But at least when you've rinsed all the money you've got on the inevitable building delays and the problems and everything's done, at least you can go. I haven't got to find another couple of thousand pounds to buy a sofa. Yeah, you've got that stuff in advance and the way that works is and you will know this it's all planning in advance and that's that's what I do. I mean, I do it when I'm going away for the weekend. You know I plan what I'm going to pack. So you know it's no surprise that I'm a planner. But you know when I've designed kitchens I've made lists of how many cupboards I can fit in a space and what's going to go in each cupboard.

Speaker 1:

And therefore have I got enough cupboard space? Do I need to add a shelf? You know, that way you also feel more in control, oh for sure. Well, let's talk about planning. So the planning I mean that is such a big part of it, isn't it? I think everything the reason I started this podcast and the reason I um, and a big part of the online renovation course I've created it's just all about plan, plan, plan and some more planning, because I really think that the planning that I always say that's kind of where the gold is, because if you plan well at the start, it's not only going to save you money, but it's also going to actually make your renovation run more smoothly and more on time. So I do wonder, kind of what, how do you plan, um, for your own renovation if you can give us like a really quick breakdown of kind of starting? Which bits would you plan before you actually started and had anyone even come into your home to start work?

Speaker 2:

uh well, I'm massively obsessed over the floor plan because you know, I know it's different when you go into a space and you're confronted by a wall that you can't bash through.

Speaker 2:

But I think and we had a couple of examples of that here but start with the floor plan so you can get a sense of how big the rooms are. And you know, I mean you all have covered this already you know, on an estate agent's floor plan a really thick black line is there's probably a supporting wall, so that's going to harder to knock down and a thin wall is probably going to be easier to move or bash a hole in for a door or something. So very much the floor plan and looking at how the rooms are. One of the first things I do is look at the way the doors open and close. I'm a huge fan of sliding door. I live in a small Victorian terrace and where the bathroom is positioned there's a bedroom behind that, at the end of that corridor. When we moved in, if the bathroom door was open then my son couldn't get out of his bedroom because it blocked the space.

Speaker 2:

I mean he could, but you know, it didn't work and it didn't work in the flow. I suspect it was because that bit didn't exist when the house was built and it's been added on and and you know, I don't think the Victorians necessarily someone will correct me but they're not known for their sliding doors unless they're on barns. So that will be the first thing I do I look at. You know, if there's a small room can and we can't make the room any bigger, you know, because we're not extending or it's just in the middle or whatever. You know, can we add a sliding door or a pocket door? And what I did in this house was I stole only about 15 centimetres from a small bathroom to add a pocket door and that means that we've got space there. You know where a door might have been. We've got a radiator there so that's not blocked. People can walk up and down the passageway. So that's the first thing I look at is doors. The second thing I do which I think I think we don't do enough is look at where the rooms are and take a moment to consider if that's where you want those rooms to be. Yeah, so you know, for example, I would always then look at a floor plan and see if the rooms are where you need them to be for the way you live. You know, we've all seen estate agents films on the on the television and they come in and they go this is the kitchen, this is the dining room, this is the sitting room and these are the bedrooms. You go okay, that's bedroom, that's fine.

Speaker 2:

But we live in a very different way now, and so you know, with your classic Victorian house, the kitchen is at the back, it's small and dark, because it might have had servants in it or it basically had women in it and the men were at the front, so they didn't care about your dark space. So now the mood is to build into that side, return and make your kitchen bigger and lighter, and then everybody wants a sofa in their kitchen and then nobody's using their sitting room. So you know, think about whether you need to add that space, which will cost you thousands, hundreds of thousands of pounds, depending on where you're doing it, or whether you need to move things around. And obviously there's a big trend at the moment and a fashion for the bifold doors at the back of your house so you can see the garden.

Speaker 2:

Well, maybe, instead of putting your kitchen there, perhaps you would put your dining room there, or or maybe even your sitting room, so that you would then put your kitchen the working part of the kitchen perhaps in the traditional middle of the house, where it's darker, where you can light it to prep. But then you're going through to a sitting room to have a rest or to the back of the house to sit and look at the garden. So I always look at, you know the rooms and don't necessarily accept that just because they're labeled in that traditional way, that that's what you want them to be. And likewise with the principal bedroom, which is what parents always have because it's the biggest, you're never in there.

Speaker 1:

Because you're in this beautiful kitchen you've built.

Speaker 2:

You're downstairs in your sitting room with your fabulous sofa that you've saved up to buy. You don't need the biggest bedroom If you've got small children. Small children equals big toys. Yes, I mean, when mine were really small, they shared the biggest bedroom in the house until one of them apparently said the other one was snoring and, at the age of seven, moved out in a huff into the spare room and they't share after that. But you know, we at that time went up to the loft conversion, which had a sloping ceiling, which was much smaller, much darker, but we only went up there to sleep. You know, we didn't, we didn't hang out in it.

Speaker 1:

So I think that doors and floor plans for where the rooms are, that's my key point yes, oh, I love a floor plan and that's um, I did that exact thing in a client project actually, where we moved the kitchen to the middle, because obviously in the kind of narrower Victorian houses we get here in the UK, particularly in London, um, that middle area is always a little bit tricky and sometimes I find if people keep the kitchen at the back and the living room at the front, that middle bit becomes a bit of a waste of space. It becomes a passage.

Speaker 2:

I think really often um, and you know, and I've, I've been to houses and people say, oh, it's going to be the music room, but you know, whether you're playing music or listening to music, if it's open to the sitting room and someone watches, wants to watch the tv, then that doesn't work. Or it's a playroom but the kids don't want to play in it because it's dark.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, yeah, and also my daughter has drums, so I definitely don't want that to be a music. Yeah, that's a whole different problem. Yeah, six-year-old with drums, not in the middle section of the house, thank you, so that's really great on the planning. That's some amazing advice there. So if we quickly go back to kind of the slow renovating, so I guess what first made you question this idea of slow renovating and kind of how has your perspective evolved over time? And kind of what do you see as kind of the biggest pitfalls of renovating slowly?

Speaker 2:

I don't know if there are necessarily pitfalls to renovating slowly. You know, if that's what you've got to do or that's what you're comfortable doing, then that's you know, that's fine. I mean, let's be honest, everybody wants to, everybody needs and does things in the way that suits them and that works for them. I mean, you know, I suppose people say they want to take it slowly because they want to get it right, and there is absolutely an argument for that in that you know you need to live in the space and understand how the light travels, to work out the colours, understand how you're using this space. I feel, perhaps because I've done a lot of houses, that I can work out a lot of that in advance. You know, I know where the light's going to travel and I know what difference that's going to make. So north facing will have a very steady, cool blue light all day. South facing will probably at some point have the sun shining directly in. That's going to fade your sofa and your pictures. I once had a wall of books. By the time I moved out five years later, couldn't see the titles on any of them because the sun had come in and faded them all. Yeah, so there are again certain things you could work out in advance about. You know colours you like and how the light will affect them, particularly with things like, you know, pink, pale pink. You know a southern light is going to make that quite peachy and corally, whereas in a northern room, you know, the grey can go very cold because it's got a blue light on it. So there's taking it slowly. There's also, you know, yes, understand how you're going to use the space, but I think you already know how you live. You already know how your families live. You can future proof and you can take time to think about that, but you also your tastes. Your style might change if you wait too long, and that's okay. But if you keep putting it off, to wait until you've worked out what you want, maybe you never get there. There, and my issue with it is that I don't want to spend 10 years living in a space that I hate, waiting to make it into the space. I want it to be yes, which is why I will do all the planning in advance. And you do have to pivot on the spot. Of course you do, because things change.

Speaker 2:

So we had in this house, for some reason there's a funny little angled wall in the kitchen and the bathroom. And I studied that floor plan for the six months before we got into the house and we had conversations and we ran up quotes about could we straighten that wall, which would give us an extra, possibly meter in the kitchen and bathroom. Now, in a small bathroom and an extra square meter is quite a lot in the kitchen. It would have just made it easier. We could have perhaps had a table in a different position or had more cupboards or you know. So we were all set to do that, um, and then we were thinking you know, is it worth what it will cost against the space we'll get? So it was all hypothetical. When we moved in we realized and this can this probably happens a lot on estate agents plans we realized that the window at the back of the sitting room had not been drawn right and if we were going to straighten that wall we would lose basically one half of a double window right. So we realized that wasn't going to work. So that was in the bin straight away. We'll work around it. So on that angled wall we now have a radiator with a picture on top of it. Looks quite nice, looks like we meant it, because that's another key thing. So you do have to pivot and I don't necessarily think there are downfalls to slow renovating it's. You know you're more likely to make mistakes if you're doing it fast. Let's be honest, it's just I want to do it fast and get on with my life.

Speaker 2:

I wrote a piece a while ago about how the pursuit of perfectionism is ruining your interior design, and I wrote this. It's actually been one of my most read pieces on Substack, and I wrote this. It's actually been one of my most read pieces on Substack, and the reason I wrote it was because I see people constantly hesitating, hesitating over tiny details. You know, do I want my tile 15 centimetres or 20 centimetres? Do I want this shade of cream or that shade of cream?

Speaker 2:

Part of the problem is there's too much choice, but also it gives you an excuse to not do anything because you're so frightened of making the wrong decision that you don't do it. And actually most decisions can be put right with a bit of time. So, paint being a classic example, you can change paint color. Sometimes you can't do anything about it and rather than obsessing about it, you just have to move on, and I know, there are a couple of things in this house which didn't go the way I wanted them to and I always point them out to people and they're like, literally, I didn't, I can't even see that, or it looks better this way, or I wouldn't have noticed. So you know, I think you have to kind of jump into it, think about what you need, think about what you want, try and marry the want and the need as far as possible and just just do it and you will learn as you go along, and most mistakes, you know, are not going to be enormous.

Speaker 1:

Yes, it's kind of like trying to avoid that decision fatigue at the start rather than getting fully into the renovation and then becoming stuck on those decisions, because that also holds things up, doesn't it? If you are holding up your builders, you haven't made your proper decisions yet on your tiles, on your colors. So I think, again, it comes back to that planning of absolutely, you know, taking taking a long time for the planning. So you can be slow there and you can get your samples and you can live with them and you can test out your colors, but, um, like you say, when it comes to actually practically having builders on site living in your home pretty much with you, um, that's the bit you want to speed up and and that is also the bit, because I don't think, until you're really doing it you realize how many decisions you're making on the hoof.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I remember when we did a loft conversion in the last house years ago and I remember my husband coming back from work one day and going oh, they haven't made much progress, and I was like we literally had a 90 minute conversation about whether the basin was going to go there or there. You know you weren't here, you just come home and see the basin's not on the wall we had to address. If we put the basin on the wall there, then we've got to do an extra bit of plumbing under the floor and then that's going to impact that. And then there's you know we've ordered the tiles and can we do that? So that is where it gets really tiring.

Speaker 2:

And knowing that those decisions are coming and there will be you know lots of brilliant podcasts like yours there's places to read, there's things to learn, so you can be prepared for it. Because the other place, I actually think the mistakes are mostly made. It's not whether you do it fast or slow, it is in the design fatigue or the decision fatigue, and the mistakes I've made have come, usually towards the end, where I'm like please leave my house builders, I just, I just can't, I actually don't care. And the sort of classic example in this house is that we have quite a high worktop and it was fitted right at the end. My builder, kieran, lovely man, six foot seven, so you know he wasn't paying attention he built a worktop for him.

Speaker 2:

And you know we're quite small and, and actually it's fine, I weirdly quite like a slightly high area to chop on, but we've got a gas hob and the burners are quite tall, so by the time you're staring, I mean first world problem, but in an example of a mistake with decision fatigue. That is one such mistake. And had it not been near the end of the project and had we both been thinking and there's another one which can be corrected the basin was put in the bathroom. I was on a plane flying to Sweden for Stockholm Design Week and my husband was at home and the tiler turned up and he didn't have his tiling machine cutter.

Speaker 2:

And we had the tiles in place and it was just like do you want them coming out from the corner or shall we move along? And I was like I'm literally going to lose my signal at any point. Just put them from the corner, coming along, and that'll be fine. And when I got back, what I realised was that they're not. The basin is now not in the middle of the tiles. He needed to either add an extra tile on the end or not start in the corner if he wasn't going to cut them. And I get why he didn't want to cut them, because it's just freestanding bit of tile in front of a basin. The whole thing could have gone five centimeters to the left and it would have looked beautiful as it is.

Speaker 1:

Winds me up every single day, again one of the things that really I spend hours on is the tile layout because, yeah, when the lines aren't where I want them to be, it's all you see. So that, yeah, I think everyone has their thing, isn't it? And that's definitely my thing the tiles don't be where they need to be but this is, this is resolvable.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I think there's only 15 tiles there. So you know, we could take the tiles off and relay them ourselves. You know, god knows we've got quite a few left over. We could add to the tiles and tile the whole wall, which is also a look I quite like in bathrooms actually that fully tiled, so we can put it right. Had I done like you'd done and spent a bit more time thinking about it, that could have been totally averted.

Speaker 2:

So you know, again it comes down to planning and you know these decisions are going to come. You know, there's also that moment where you're standing in a pile of mud with acros propping up the ceiling and the builder goes well, where do you want your sockets? And you're like how do I? I don't know where I'm making toast at this point I haven't got a ceiling. But you know you're going to be asked that.

Speaker 2:

So those things you can think about. You know how many cupboards can you fit? What's going to go in them? Where do you want your sockets? Do you want to? You know, walk from the toaster to the coffee machine over there. You might need a double socket. Or, you know, does the dishwasher open. Can you get to it from the table? All those things you could plan in advance so that when you have to make a decision because there's a problem as there always is you're not so exhausted that you can try and tackle it rationally, yeah, and also what I find is that people don't realize how early on in the process they need to make these decisions.

Speaker 1:

So something I always talk about are taps, because suddenly you don't have, like you say, you don't have ceilings or whatever, but the builder's already asking you where, where are your taps? Because they need to install the first fixed part into the wall and then the second fixed part only get fitted six months, a year later, when they're finishing off, and the other thing is you can't really do a lighting plan until you've worked out where your furniture is going to go.

Speaker 2:

So so most of us in in small Victorian houses, you, there's only probably one place the bed can go, there's one place the sofa can go. So you can, you know, get that starting point in, and if you know you're going to knock a wall down, then you know, obviously you're not putting a sofa in that gap. So you do again. It's back to the floor plan. Look at the floor plan, work out where the rooms are going to go, then work out give or take, take where your big pieces of furniture go that can't move around, and then make sure you light them. You know you can, you can have extra sockets for lamps and tables that might move around. But you know you, if your bed can only go in one spot, you know you're going to need bedside lamps. So that bit you can all do in advance and and you don't need to be taken by surprise by it exactly.

Speaker 1:

I think all of that for people to know, all of that is really, really useful. That's really really great advice there. But what I would actually love to talk about I'm so curious about your house in Italy. I would love to chat about that and find out how you found it, how the renovation went, because it looks like you did quite a big renovation and again quite quickly. And also, like did you speak the language? What was it like renovating in a foreign country, in a different country, with a different language? Did you have Italian builders? Did you have English builders? I have so many questions. Maybe you can just quickly talk us through what that was like.

Speaker 2:

So we had always been a dream to have a place in Italy. My mother-in-law had a tiny flat in Liguria, just north of Pisa. I mean, she was on the Ligurian-Tuscan border and you know, we'd always been there on holidays with the boys and I love Italy and we always thought one day we'll have a place. And the plan was that, you know, when both boys had finished their studies and were working so still probably from where we are now, about two or three years down the line we would sell the big London house and we would then downsize in London to a two bedroom flat and buy a small place in Italy. And that was all the sensible plan. And then, you know, in the lockdown, everybody sort of went a bit mad, didn't they? And some people approached us the friends of our architect, and they tried three times to buy a house on our road and for various reasons it hadn't worked out. So they made us a private offer because the Chinese whispers had gone around from the architect to the builder and round where we live. That had gone round from the architect to the builder and round where we live, that we were moving to Italy and it was a classic case of Chinese whispers. Because we weren't, it was just one day we will. So, anyhow, they came along and they made us an offer and we thought, well, you know, let's do it, why not? You know, we will have to sell eventually, so let's do it. So we were not ready for a two-bedroom flat because both boys were still in and out.

Speaker 2:

Um, so we downsized to a smaller house and that's when we started looking in Italy and the we found this house. It's in a village just outside Turin, uh, which is a part we didn't know hugely well, but we knew it a bit and we really liked it. Um, we didn't want to go south uh, it's too hot and I didn't want to be in Tuscany in that classic sort of holiday area, because we we very much wanted a place that we could, we would feel like we would, we were living there and it was work as well. I didn't want to have a beach house where I would constantly not want to turn my computer on because I didn't want to work. You know, it's a different kind of feel.

Speaker 2:

So we found this place, which was ridiculously too large, but it was slightly stalking us around the internet and we'd done, we'd been very Phil and Kirsty, so we'd gone on weekends of house hunting and we'd gone to see the farmhouse, in the middle of nowhere, um, and and we are not farmhouse people, we are city people and, uh, we were quite freaked out by the space and the distance and and and the amount of money that particular one was going to take. And then we went to see another one, which was a very beautiful, what the Italians call liberty style, but it says art nouveau, stunning, you know, very elegant steps up to the front door, beautiful terrazzo floors. That was lovely, um, but the village was completely dead and we would have had to get in the car to buy a pint of milk, and and my sons, who at that stage were in their early 20s, were like, you know, we're not, we're not coming if we can't walk for a beer. And I was like, well, fair enough. So, you know, we ruled that out and eventually this place was left and it was that classic, let's go and see it so we can rule it out, because it's too big, it's not been touched for years, it will be a nightmare. And of course we went to see it, drove into the village, fell in love with the village, which has got a very beautiful restaurant that the estate agent told us people come from all over Turin to go to, which they do. It's got a trattoria. It's got a shop with a bar and a pharmacy. You know beautiful village and schools.

Speaker 2:

And we saw the house, which had been bought by the owners in 1964. It was their weekend house until the mid 80s. They had five children. They moved there in the mid 80s. They did it up a bit then and hadn't really touched it since then. The oldest parts of it are 300 years old and you know it had at the time 10 bedrooms and two kitchens and a pizza oven.

Speaker 2:

And we were like this is we are insane, this is far too big. But we I mean it was just we spoke to us both we just loved it and no one else wanted it because it was too big. And so you know there's always that thing that a lot of houses in Italy and I guess, france and Spain you know the market is not like it is in London Things can be on the market for a long time and no one wanted this house because you know it was too big and they didn't know what to do with it and it worked for us and you know, we couldn't actually have afforded something in Turin or closer to Turin, and we couldn't have afforded a second home in England, even if we'd wanted one. So, you know, it sort of all kind of worked and so we were able to buy it and it needed a completely rewiring and replumbing. Um, the rooms were all in the right place. I mean, we weren't going to move them even if they weren't. You know, we just that's the charm, um, but that was a big job, but we were very lucky.

Speaker 2:

Um the power of social media. I had long followed someone um called Casa Lange, which is the southern part of Piedmont, and uh, and I'd watched her do up her how she's an Anglo-Italian and she does yoga retreats there. So I spoke to her and I said do you by any chance know, uh, a surveyor who speaks English, who's based around the area? And she said oh well, you know my friend, sarah, who I went to school with, is an architect. I'll put you in touch. So we were incredibly lucky and we met Sarah and she was willing to take us on. She spoke really good English. I spoke a bit of Italian. Her English is better, my Italian is now better.

Speaker 2:

She then came to the house with us, then put it out for to builders for three tenders, but ended up hiring a firm of builders, three brothers, one of whom was a school dad for her. So her, his son and her daughter are friends they're seven, um. So you know, we we ended up working with them, um, and and sarah project manager it for us, which we'd never had before, but I mean it was an absolute godsend because we weren't there. So she sent us lots of pictures about we're going to do this and do that, and there were lots of WhatsApp with sort of clumsy drawings on Can you paint that bit pink and then can you make that bit green, and then she'd come back and go do you mean this bit and that bit? And I'd'd go. No more clumsy arrows. So we did it like that um and I mean thankfully, because she is an amazing architect and project manager we did it, um, and again, we did it fast because the builders were available.

Speaker 2:

We didn't want to run the risk that if we hadn't made decisions or didn't have things ready for them, that they would wander off to another job and we'd never get them back again. So again, it was all planned. We chose the bathrooms, we chose the tiles, we chose the paint. While they were doing the plumbing and rewiring, we were thinking about the other things. So it was able to go. I mean bang, bang, bang. I think they were quite shocked. I mean they started in May 23 and they finished basically Christmas Eve 23,. So seven months. I think they were a bit shocked but we had a big party for them at Christmas and they came with all their children, their friends and it was lovely to, you know, be in the finished house.

Speaker 1:

That's what you can achieve with good planning, isn't it? If you know what you you um? Where did you source your items? So I'm assuming you sourced in Italy from.

Speaker 2:

Well, it was a real mix, actually, because we felt for that house that that it needed, quite as we wanted, a sort of retro style in the bathroom. So we've got one bathroom. We have one bathroom with a pink loo and a pink base and one's got a blue one. Um, and the italian style that we were shown tended much more towards the modern and we didn't want that. So, and and we then eventually insisted in one showroom that they show us something a bit more retro, and it was so expensive. So in the end we bought, uh, from burlington here and my husband drove it over in stages. In the end, we bought from Burlington here and my husband drove it over in stages in the back of the car.

Speaker 2:

So two loos and a basin in the back of the car and then, obviously, the shower attachments aren't much. So you know, some of it we bought there and some of it we bought here and moved over. So it was a mix of the two and we didn't replace any floors because that was a really big job that we we couldn't afford to do. Um, so it was mostly smaller things. The big thing was taking the lose over.

Speaker 1:

Yes, that is definitely dedication. My goodness well, it sounds amazing and for everyone um listening, if you go onto youtube, what I'm going to do is have some photos of the house that you can have a look at and see just how incredible it is. Finally, kate, I think if we had someone listening who was kind of hesitating to start their renovation, what would you do to kind of encourage them to just take action sooner rather than later?

Speaker 2:

I would get a piece of graph paper and a pen and I would or print out your floor plan and I would ask yourself six questions and they are the six questions that actually we talk about all the time when you train to be a journalist, and they are who, what, when, where, how and why. And I think, actually, if you answer those questions, you will get yourself started, because you'll suddenly you'll have a plan and you'll know where you're going. So, who, who is living there, who is using the space? And, of course, it's easy to say, well, you know, it's me and my partner and my two kids and the dog. What you mean is, you know, are you a couple of downsizers? Are you a couple with small kids? Are you a child-free couple? Because who is using that space and their needs will vary depending on that answer. So, who? Who is using it? And be honest, and what are they doing in there? So again, oh, they're cooking. But are you cooking? Do you cook? Or do you? You know, a la Sarah Jessica Parker, use the oven for shoe storage, you know? Do you have parties in the kitchen? So, do you want a wine fridge? Or actually, you know, do you want a massive range cooker Because you got a farmhouse and you're cooking for 20 people every day. So it's really who are you, who's cooking, who's using it and what are they doing in there? When are they doing?

Speaker 2:

It is really key and this is really interesting for bathrooms, because if you've got a family of four and they all need to get out of the door at half past eight in the morning to go to work and school and college and everything else, you need to think about how you're going to create that bathroom so you can make it flow for everyone. So who and that also then talks to your lighting you know, if you've got a, a sitting room, if you're only in there in the evening to watch telly, when the kids have gone to bed at nine o'clock, maybe you do want to paint it dark and have it cozy and have lots of artificial light, or maybe that has to double up as your workspace. So you need maybe a lighter color with better lighting and more natural daylight. So who, what and when are the three key ones. Who, what, when, where?

Speaker 2:

I think where is important. Where are you going to shop? Which takes you into your budget and how much money you've got? Where do you want to get things from? You want a balance. You might want that very beautiful sofa which costs a lot of of money, but you know that will last you for 10, 20 years. You can recover it and maybe you just want some kind of cheaper light bulbs and you can make your own lampshades. You know, think about that. Where you want to shop, who, what, when, where. The last two are how and why.

Speaker 2:

How is really important. How do you want to feel in the space? And this takes you down your color route. So you know, and you, because you want to understand how you want to feel in the space, and how are you going to achieve that with the colors and decoration you're using? So you know.

Speaker 2:

My classic example is you know you love green and you look at emerald green. How does emerald green make you feel? Does that make you and in my case, that makes me feel tense. I'm not having it in any room in the house, but if that makes you feel energetic and creative and buzzy and ready to start the day, well, let's slap it on in the kitchen, because that's quite a good room to feel energized in. You don't want that in the bedroom, because you need your bedroom to be calm and relaxing and safe and cocooning. So if you want a green bedroom, you have to look at the various different shades of green and work out which is the green that you like that is going to make you feel how you want to feel in that bedroom. Or, you know again, in the sitting room, do you want to feel, you know, calm and relaxed, or is it your party room? You know we all live differently, so the how is very important.

Speaker 2:

That takes you to your colour scheme and how you use your house and the why. People often forget about the why. You know, why are you doing this? Well, because my power shower doesn't work and I hate the flooring. Okay, great.

Speaker 2:

It's really important to understand what you don't like and what you, what you want, as you know, in conjunction with everything else. So why are you doing it? Well, because I can't open the dishwasher without closing the bin. That was my previous house. Or, you know, because I don't want, you know, my bedroom to be in this dark space. Therefore, I'm moving it around. So why is really key? And write that down. And I think, if you answer those questions for yourself, honestly, write them down and then look at your floor plan you will have. You've taken the first step because at that point you know kind of what you want and you've begun a sense of how you're going to get there. So that's how it unblocks you and then you can start. You know kind of what you want and you've begun a sense of how you're going to get there.

Speaker 1:

So that's how it unblocks you and then you can start, you know, planning room by room. Yes, amazing, I mean, I always always start with a floor plan as well, and I just always encourage people to kind of examine their lives really quickly and just see how they're using that their space now and how they can change their floor plan around. But I will literally sit with a floor plan for hours, whether it's for myself or for a client, just to almost exhaust all the options of how the space can be used. Sometimes I even take all those internal walls out and start again, and you can always, you know, sometimes there isn't a wall you can take down, but you can always kind of deal with that when you come to architect stage. But I think it's so important, I call it the the dreaming phase, where you just sit and examine your life, what you want, what you want your space to look like and feel like, and then just have that floor plan, which is so key, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

and and I think once you've done that, then it's really important to stress test it. You know, I'm working with a client on a series of sort of rental flats, hotels in Mallorca, and we'll go through all the questions and then it's like, well actually, but can you imagine how you're going to get from here to there? And can you reach that jug off that shelf? You know, actually we've got that shelf so high that it's pointless, in which case it's a decorative shelf. What are we going to put on that decorative shelf? And imagine, you know, if you're standing there cooking, you know, is the light going to shine in your eyes? Is that the right thing? So it's also. It's very important, if you can, to just visualize yourself in the space, to visualize yourself walking through and and does it work? Can you imagine yourself in it? And then I think it's also important but I think this maybe comes more with a client relationship Throw something in there that's really oddball and see what the reaction is, because then you also get to know yourself a bit better. You know if you can do or get you know.

Speaker 2:

There used to be one example I used to say, which is slightly harder but if you're planning a kitchen renovation, maybe get a really good mate to come around and cook you dinner in your own kitchen, because they're not familiar with it. So they're going to say, god, how do you live with that? It's really annoying and you've got so used to the problems that you don't notice. So you know, I mean you sort of have to put your big girl pants on because you might end up being insulted. But there is also a way of getting a stranger to just, or a friend to have a candid example of you know, have you realized that you've got to walk all the way over there to unload your dishwasher? What about if it was here, you know? So get, get some other opinions or just ask yourself in real detail. It's planning, yeah, it's all planning.

Speaker 1:

I love that idea. I love it, um. So I think we will end off. Thank you so much for coming on, but lastly, I just wanted to ask you about your um design retreat and kind of what's next for you. I know you've written numerous amazing books and then you've got this amazing house in Italy where you're going to be hosting or you have been hosting your design retreat. So, yeah, I think to end off, just tell us kind of what's next for you.

Speaker 2:

Well, we, having bought this ridiculously large house that we've accidentally upsized to, we sort of wanted to share it, and it's a very undiscovered part of Italy. So you know, we, we'd noticed there's a lot. There's a lot of Italy. So, you know, we, we've noticed there's a lot. There's a lot of yoga retreats and cooking retreats and actually, you know, I think since the lockdowns, people have become much more aware of their surroundings, of their decor. They're much more aware of the importance of of getting your interiors right so that your house can support you, so that you're not fighting it.

Speaker 2:

You know it's hard enough out there to go to work, to find work, to battle all the things we have to battle at the moment, and you know cost of living and everything else. We need our homes to work for us. We need them to support us, to make us feel ready to go out there and do it again. So the so I actually think that interior design retreats are basically the new wellness. Um, so the idea is that, you know, we welcome just 15 people at a time to the house for a series of workshops where we talk about finding your style, we talk about working out your color, we talk about the pitfalls that you might face in renovation.

Speaker 2:

It's this podcast brought to life. I've teamed up with an architect, so she talks about planning your budget, planning kitchens, and we do all that with a small group of people with a lot of Aperol and really great food, and we then go to the vintage market in Turin and it's just. It's a really lovely sort of long weekend which is indulgent because it's a mini break. That's very opposite the Bridget Jones movies coming out soon. It's a mini break in another city with like minded people where you, you know, drink lovely drinks and eat lovely food and learn how to make your home work better for you and get a better sense of what you need and what you want and how to get it all in this beautiful house Amazing, I couldn't think of anything better.

Speaker 1:

I'd love to come. It sounds like a dream to me. Well, that's amazing, kate. Thank you so much again for coming on to the podcast. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's been an absolute pleasure and I'm so grateful that you could come on. And yes, I've been reading all your books, following you for a long time, reading your blog, so I'm just really happy that you've come on today to chat to me and to chat to the listeners as well. A huge thank you, kate, for joining me today to share your renovation experience, wisdom and knowledge. I'm so grateful for this conversation and how it will help renovators out there.

Speaker 1:

Don't forget to check out Kate's Substack at katewatsonsmithsubstackcom and the incredible design retreats which we discussed. Those take place in Turin and I'll link to everything in the episode notes and the show notes. That's it, everybody, for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and I'll see you in the next one. It's bye for now. For more information on my five pillar process for successful renovation, you can go directly to southplacestudiocom forward slash pillars, where you'll find an introduction to the process, which covers each of the pillars and what they cover. We also have a number of other free renovation resources. Go now to southplacestudiocom forward slash freebies. I have created some amazing freebies for you there. There is one on the process, like we just said. There is one on planning permission. There is one on kitchen design. There is another one on lighting planning. Go and check those out. There's so much free information there to help you with your renovation.