Surrey Homes | SH58 | August 2019 | Restoration & New Build supplement inside

This page: In one corner of the kitchen a funky
bright-red vintage chair and lamp with a 1970s
psychedelic print lampshade sit below a boldly
coloured painting by Juliet’s mother on the wall
itself that was right for the family. “It was an adventure to
move here – people in Hastings don’t follow the rules.”
And Juliet had an instant intro to that unconventional
Hastings creative community, via Sam Bruce, owner of
the fabulous In House Junkie online store for wonderful
one-off decorative pieces. Her house was featured in
Wealden Times / Surrey Homes June 2018 and her
name comes up frequently as a source of wonderful
items in many of the magazine’s featured houses.
“I met Sam in London at a playgroup,” says Juliet. “We have
kids of the same age. Then she moved to Tunbridge Wells and
I moved to Hastings, but Sam’s mum Helen Bartlett lives here
and Sam used to have her shop in St Leonards. So she was
our intro to Hastings and the edgy, artistic, lovely people.”
And handily, considering the number and scale of
the windows in Holmhurst, Helen makes wonderful
curtains – she’s made all of them for Juliet. But
more of the soft furnishings to come, there’s plenty
to look at in the first room we come to.
Designed by Juliet and Jake, the working part of the
kitchen is confined to one wall with cupboards in the most
appealing dusty pink, with a geometric pattern in copper
a feature on some of the doors and copper handles. The
worktop is poured concrete and the wall lights are from
eBay – but shift up one level above the white subway
splashback tiles and a bold painting shifts the mood of the
room from purely functional, to more of a hang out space.
Which is exactly what you see when you turn around and
take in the funky bright-red vintage chair and lamp with
an outrageous 1970s psychedelic print lampshade, with a
boldly coloured painting by Juliet’s mother on the wall.
The tiles on the kitchen floor are from Lewes tile
company Material Plans, put in by Jake – which is
how they both like to do things. “We come up with
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