Designed around the huge school window and full of festive sparkle, Kim and Mark’s kitchen is quite a contrast to the gloomy space they faced when they moved in - with no plumbing, heating or electrics. Installing the oil-fired Aga transformed the room, and an old farmhouse table, painted by Julia Headland of The Post Room, serves as a kitchen island. An eight-foot-tall real tree from Pines & Needles is decked with baubles collected over the years, and some more recent finds from Gisela Graham
Words and assistant styling Karen Darlow Styling Pippa Blenkinsop Photographs Malcolm Menzies
Outside a thatched cottage in one of Kim and Mark’s favourite Norfolk villages, someone was tapping a For Sale sign into the ground. With views of the church and common and - unusually for Norfolk - on a slight hill, the cottage was in the perfect setting. Not far from Norwich where they both work, and yet with country walks in every direction, the house was going to be in demand and Kim and Mark knew they’d have to act fast.
‘If I’m honest, though, I didn’t find the house instantly appealing,’ says Kim. ‘It was actually two properties: the timbered cottage that had first got our attention and, joined to that, the former village school.’ Only it wasn’t exactly joined, it wasn’t exactly habitable and, adds Kim, ‘It wasn’t particularly attractive - you had to have a lot of imagination. The beams were black, the carpets were pink, plus the front garden had been the school playground so was all tarmac. I couldn’t figure out how we would make it work for us.’