New Beginnings…

This month there have been some big shifts in the universe – those of you who follow Kirsty Gallagher on Instagram, will know this but not only has there been the Spring Equinox, the start of a new astrological year, but also two huge planetary shifts that will shape our world and the future. A lot for one cold, grey and rainy month.

But it has got me thinking…I’ve noticed a lot of commentary on Instagram over the last few months about feeling slow, sluggish, and a little bit down. I wonder if this is the aftermath of the pandemic causing this, or whether the world news and challenging economy are just getting too much? I think we have all been impacted in some way. We have had huge challenges with our renovation over the last few months…we have so much experience and we really thought that this one would be fairly simple – the last one for us in a little while as we hope to settle at our lovely Cotswold Farmhouse for years to come.

Challenges

But the universe had other plans – we waved goodbye to our build team at Christmas having completed most of ‘phase one’ of the build. Phase one was the renovation of the current house – a large space that took all of last year to complete – we are almost there with that, but the house can’t make sense or feel orderly until the new kitchen extension is complete. We have stuff everywhere and nothing where it’s meant to be, and we can’t move things until the kitchen is finished. As a perfectionist, I am starting to find this very challenging!

Anyway, I digress – we said goodbye to our build team in December, expecting to see them in early February to finish the kitchen. At this point I need to mention that we have a wonderful Polish team, who have worked with us for years. They went back to Poland as a team of five and by early January were down to two. Tragically one of our most loved and strongest team members died of sepsis on New Year’s Day – we are still coming to terms with this loss, so sudden and shocking and so wrong. He was young and had so much more to give. Another of our team arrived home to a letter from the Polish army calling him for six months training in case they have to join the war with Ukraine and our eldest member of the team has decided to retire (though we are still hopeful we can convince him otherwise).

We are LONGING to get the house and garden finished (the garden is a whole other blog post), so we can start to really enjoy living here and also so we can start to share a lot more content with you too. My first passion is styling spaces and inspiring people to elevate their own homes and once the house is finished you will get a lot more of this content from me.

The last few years we have pivoted our business into client work – when the pandemic hit in 2020 we had our renovation and rental business well established and on paper had a full year in terms of bookings across our London flat, Menorcan rental and our Cotswold Cottage. It was the first year we had all three up and running and we were so excited to share them with the lovely guests that had booked. Sadly, as we all know, things changed quite dramatically that Spring, and three years on we have sold the flat and the house in Menorca and now just have our cottage as a rental.

Our Cotswold Cottage bathed in golden sunshine.

Silver Linings

Although it was challenging and upsetting at the time, there has been a silver lining to it all – we pivoted into client work and have renovated three and a half beautiful houses for our lovely clients. I have started to share images of one of the projects and will share a lot more here soon. It’s another string to our bow and something we will continue to do, but in a very gentle way – one project at a time so we can really give our clients the full attention they deserve. You can find out more about this and what we offer on our beautiful new website – a really big part of our new beginning and designed by the wonderful and talented Becky from Good by Design, we are thrilled with it and feel that it encapsulates perfectly who we are as a brand and where we want to take things in future.

Alongside a selection of client projects, my goal is to really expand my time spent creating inspirational content for this blog, social media, and for brands. I love working with brands who share our passion for design and craftsmanship so much – the relationships we have formed over the years with brands such as Trunk Floor, Armac Martin & Rebecca Udall are so rewarding, so please expect a lot more from me on this front.

Our Bath Townhouse Bathroom was a collaboration with Porter, Trunk Floor and Mylands.

I would like to take a moment to thank each and every one of you who has followed our journey so far – it has been exciting and certainly challenging at times, but it has always been such a pleasure to share content and engage with you all, I can’t wait to share more and hopefully inspire more. I would also love to know if there are any specific subjects you would like us to talk about  – you can email us here with your suggestions - always so lovely to get feedback.

We have some exciting things in the pipeline – the house being finished being the most exciting, but also some beautiful client renovations to share, as well as an art collaboration and hopefully some furniture collaborations coming soon too.

Thank you again and I hope you have enjoyed this post – it’s been lovely to write one again after so long!

LBM x