TUNBRIDGE WELLS — NEW BUILD
A project restart and full interior design, completed in fourteen months.
A mothballed new build, a disengaged project manager, and a client ready to begin again. A finished, fully furnished home fourteen months later.
THE PROBLEM
The property was a 6,000 square foot new build in one of Tunbridge Wells’s most sought-after locations. The client — a tech entrepreneur and father of young children — had been developing the site personally. The build had been mothballed for six months. By the time he was ready to restart, the project manager had largely disengaged.
He reached out because a mutual friend had mentioned my management consultancy background. His priority was getting the job done, using design as a tool — exactly the way I work.
THE INTERVENTION
I facilitated a planning session with the project manager, using an early, unformalised version of what has since become part of my Property Strategy Roadmap process: mapping the trades and their dependencies against a timeline, together, until the route to completion was visible to everyone in the room. The project manager was experienced, but sceptical — so I built the plan with him, not for him, and by the end of the session he was running it himself. The project restarted soon afterwards.
Then came the second call. Shortly after that initial workshop, the client reached out again — this time asking me to step in and handle all the interior design elements of the project.
The key to the whole project was getting both the project manager and the client out of their heads and into the house. From then on, our design keyword was ‘fun’. Bespoke wallpaper with naughty cherubs on a decorative plasterwork ceiling. Tigers for the boy’s room, pink unicorns for the girl’s. And a cloakroom with oversized orange and pink neon octopus wallpaper on a metallic background, gold ceiling, fuchsia woodwork. Full of fun!
THE OUTCOME
Fourteen months from that first planning session to a finished, fully furnished home. The project was full of complexity — getting a balance between fun and functionality, yet retaining the elegance of the overall building design was a huge but wonderful challenge resulting in a truly unique home.
“Kate was fantastic from start to finish. I thought I only needed a little help with curtain fabrics, although once I realised Kate’s brilliance with colour palettes and her wide knowledge of everything from sofas to light switches, she helped me select everything from wallpaper to carpet, furniture to accessories. She created unique rooms with an overall flow to the property. As an added bonus, Kate’s contacts and industry knowledge saved me a considerable amount of money. The outcome is fantastic — colourful, quirky, fun — a perfect and unique family home for us to enjoy for many, many years to come. I would definitely use Kate’s services again.”
— Tim, Tunbridge Wells
