Inside a former ice-cream factory, transformed into a modern country house

[Russell] I don't know what it is about the land,

and the lay lines and something here

that we all have this immediate feeling of we're home.

[gentle music]

One Saturday morning,

Russell was lying in bed looking at the Modern House.

And on page 46 there was a listing of a field

and an old ice cream factory

that you could buy it with the potential to build a house.

And it was a kind of reverie, it was a city dream.

And we drove the four and a half hours to get here

and we stood in the field and looked back at the project,

which was really an idea,

and a kind of few sheds that were falling down.

And we thought, Well, it's not for us.

But actually, ended up being exactly for us, didn't it?

Yeah. And we signed up

and we bought it and we built the house.

[gentle music]

[Russell] We are in South Devon.

The countryside we're in is beautiful here.

It's really deep rolling valleys.

[Oona] It's an escape.

It's a perfect, perfect escape from our urban,

extremely busy life.

We don't get down here as often as we like,

but that's only because we'd want to be here all the time.

We wanna leave on a Friday, have every moment here,

and leave as late as we can on a Sunday.

[gentle music]

One of the planning constraints we had

was to make sure that we didn't go higher

than the original cob barn.

So the way in which we've gone round that

is by digging into the ground,

which makes the kitchen actually subterranean.

What that means is you feel like you are literally

in the garden.

And it's just such a lovely view to look out

and actually feel as though you're immersed

into the countryside.

We've designed a couple of kitchens in our time,

under the radar, not under the Pinch brand.

And this is probably a good representation of it

because we've honed our skills,

and finally got it right on this one.

The kitchen is one long room,

which has a pantry located in the center,

something that we always wanted and finally got.

We've used Douglas fir throughout,

which you can see the grain everywhere,

which looks fantastic.

It's not the most durable of surfaces,

but if you're willing to allow wood to grow just gracefully,

then it's just beautiful.

[gentle music]

We believe quite strongly

that you don't have to have all one wood in one area.

And I think this is a really good example of that.

We've got oak, cherry, ash, walnuts, Douglas fir,

actually working really well together,

and not trying to be all one species in one place.

We're not afraid to mix our timber metaphors.

[Russell chuckling]

I think there's a whole kind of attitude

that we wanted to adopt in this household,

which is about it just being a little bit careless,

not needing for everything to be pristine and looked after.

I really wanted this to be a house

that you could wear your wellies into the kitchen.

And I think the furniture needs to have that same sort

of principle that it's hardwearing,

it's kind of has a solidity.

And so the Mead dining table is much more

of a robust table compared to some of our other finer pieces

and it suits the space and the use much better.

But one that you could probably dance on.

[gentle music]

Main objective on the interior design of the piece

was to soften everything and bring some warmth to the space.

'Cause all of this concrete and white

and the breeze block walls, obviously,

by their nature, are very utilitarian.

So bringing in textiles,

which have great contrast on the walls,

or contrast in the black timber framed windows,

or something really quite fun and colorful,

like this Mexican piece of artwork.

As you might imagine, as furniture designers,

we've filled the house with our own furniture.

This piece in particular was a one-off piece

that was designed for an exhibition in New York.

And it just sits so beautifully

with the curves in the background.

We have filled the entire house pretty much

with pieces that we found from interesting places.

I mean, even this little gold-framed plan,

I'm not even sure what the building is,

but it's the tonal beauty of it,

and the gold frame on it is so beautiful.

[gentle music]

Russell and I are in constant debate

how much stuff we have in our home.

So a library is a great opportunity, open shelving,

to keep all these little bits and bobs.

Sometimes they're personal motifs, often they are books.

Quite often they're pieces of pottery,

drawings that the kids have done years ago.

And I like to be reminded of them.

Some of my favorite pieces in the house are the speakers

that my mom gave me that I grew up with.

So they really fill this whole space with music.

Music's actually quite a big thing in this house.

We have quite a lot of family discos.

Another thing is this bust by Willie Sucrot.

So a very beautiful terracotta piece.

Obviously lots of books on design

and this model was really important

because actually when you're building a modern house,

it's really important to remember the end game,

because the process can actually be quite demanding

and it is possible in all the discussion on budgets,

et cetera, to lose the joy.

So this for us represented a very visual aid memoir

of what the game was.

It helped us realize that the journey might be hard,

but the sweetener at the end is definitely worth it.

[gentle music]

So this is the oldest part of the building.

It's the original cob barn,

which was also the original ice cream factory.

Cob is a really old way of building, using, I believe,

straw and mud and stones.

And then inside it we've kept this section

looking as original as possible.

So it has the full height inside exposed beams,

and everything is just whitewashed inside.

So quite a monastic feel to the space.

We've then got three openings through to the new parts

of the building, which is adjoining this old cob barn.

[gentle music]

I think generally the whole house is very simple

in its furnishings,

quite united in its palette and materials.

But this room, I think particularly is the most simple.

And we took a lot of inspiration from Luis Barragan,

and his house in Mexico and the bedroom,

which was simply a bed and a chair,

and I think maybe a rosary, which we don't know.

And it's very much about the view.

There's certainly a learning curve when it comes to living

with a two-meter by two-meter window.

We're also southwest facing,

so we get a lot of sunshine in the morning.

So you kind of rise with the sun and settle with the sun.

And we were considering blackouts,

but actually you have to give yourself over

to the elements sometimes.

That's how we felt in this house.

So we just went for a really simple white linen curtain,

which means that you wake up early,

and you see the view, which is a wonderful thing.

Even though this room itself is quite small,

we have a similar sized space just here,

which is our bathroom, with the similar size window.

So actually you get quite a large space

in this master suite. [gentle music]

We wanted a beautiful bathroom.

We did actually try to find one secondhand,

but we couldn't get one that had good enough finish.

So in the end we went to a quite well known

bathroom retailer and got one of their pieces,

but we changed up the feet

to have the bath raised off the ground.

It gives much more sense of space and poise.

This painting is by a good friend of ours called Agnieszka,

and I absolutely adore this painting.

It's so simple and it was really important

because there's so much sunlight in this room

that we found a painting that could cope

with that amount of UV.

So she paints in oils

and that's able to withstand the amount of sunshine

that comes in. [gentle music]

The garden design, we worked with James Hamilton,

who very cleverly has designed a series of perennial beds,

which closer to the house, feel more manicured,

but then start to bleed out into a lot of wild meadow.

And then that then bleeds out further into the field

and later into the forest.

So it doesn't feel like we've just landed a garden

into the countryside.

It feels like it's part of the countryside.

[gentle music]

I don't think there's anything more beautiful

than a vegetable patch.

And so we decided to put that at the front of the house

rather than at the back of the house, hidden away.

So you actually have to travel through the vegetable patch

to go through our front door.

We're growing all the seasonal vegetables

throughout the year and eating as many of them as possible.

[gentle music]

[Oona] Building a house from scratch is something

that you can only understand when you've done it.

It takes incredible belief,

and it's a journey that you don't really know

where it's gonna end up.

You can see plans, you can build a model.

It's this kind of dream that feels like,

it's almost like when you wake up

and you can't quite remember a dream,

but you know you had a good dream.

It's that same sort of promise.

You know it's gonna be good,

but it's not quite in focus.

And the reality of being in this house

is better than any dream that I could have had.

[gentle music]