Wealden Times | WT262 | March 2024 | Kitchen & Bathroom Supplement inside

Previous page: With
its former uses as
a pub and then as
a shop, the sitting
room with its inky
dark walls has a lot of
windows This page:
The main bedroom
is home to one of
Sarah Jane’s handmade
bedspreads in printed
velvet sourced from
eBay. She also tracked
down a roll of original
1920s wallpaper from
the selling site, and a
rare Roberts radio – in
leopard print, of course
chimney breast – and then actual cheetahs
walking along in rows in opposite directions
inside the stove alcove. Sarah Jane cut each
one of them out of another roll of wallpaper
and pasted them down adding an individual
touch. “I got into wallpaper patchwork during
lockdown,” she says, “I would buy one roll
on eBay. Some of them would have been
£100 or £200 a roll new, but when there is
just one left over you can get it for £40.”
The wallpaper cavalcade is strongly apparent
in the rambling area that was previously a
workshop with concrete floor and exposed
brickwork. This space features a shower room
and loo (with gorgeous Kermit-green Italian
stud rubber flooring) and a laundry area,
complete with an enviable Victorian-style hoist
airer, the sink surround a mélange of different
patterned locally sourced tiles. “I was inspired
by the paintings of Édouard Vuillard,” Sarah
Jane explains. “He painted interiors which often
feature a lot of clashing prints in one room,”
adding, “As I have to iron for the Airbnb room, I
wanted to turn it into an enjoyable experience.”
There are two more rooms on the ground
floor – Sarah’s office, where she writes songs, and
Mark’s painting studio – both fonts of artistic
output, adding to the sense of creative thrum
that imbues the entire house. In Sarah’s space
one of her gold discs hangs on the wall – a sure
sign you are in the house of a recording star.
Upstairs the themes of mixed prints – always
with a touch of leopard somewhere – and
wallpapers continues with even greater abandon.
Particularly in the Airbnb suite, which is where
I counted the 14 different patterns. There are
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