The painting lady (From Living Northeast)

The painting lady

12:49pm Monday 19th April 2010 in

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If you stand still long enough in Victoria Clive’s home, you may be in danger of being painted a lovely shade of Off-Black.

Ruth Campbell meets the home owner who likes to make good use of the things that other people throw away.

VICTORIA Clive was like a breath of fresh air when she arrived in the well-heeled, closeknit North Yorkshire community where she now lives. The working class Irish girl, raised alone by her mother in Cork, came to the area to find her long-lost father.

He had left when she was a baby: “I was 21 when I met him and he was the poshest person I had ever known.

He is upper class, into horses and racing and cricket. He has been to public school and led a privileged life,” she says.

Her story sounds like something straight out of a Catherine Cookson novel.

The warm, vivacious, straight-talking 36-year-old, who cheerfully refers to herself as a “mad Irishwoman”, won hearts all round and ended up marrying one of her father’s friends, Charlie, who had grown up in his family’s stunning ancestral home, Nunnington Hall.

It opened up a whole new world to Victoria, a talented interior designer who has helped decorate everything from garden sheds to the grandest stately homes in the county. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me, ending up living here. I just love it,” she says.

“But I am proud of who I am. I don’t think being working class puts you at a disadvantage at all. You make your own rules. You don’t need to follow a script like many people do.”

Having handed Nunnington Hall to the National Trust in the Seventies, the Clive family all moved into various homes on the estate so, when they married more than 11 years ago, Victoria moved into Charlie’s bachelor pad – a large, four-bedroomed, detached 17th century stone farmhouse.

Turning such an imposing property into a family home, with little money to throw at the project, would be a daunting prospect for any young bride. And Victoria was also sensitive to the fact that Charlie had lived in the house, with its dark green and magnolia decor, for more than seven years. So she adopted a softly, softly approach.

She wanted to live in the house for a while to see how the space worked for them and to get to know it in different lights and at different times of the year.

But she also knew her own mind. And some things just had to go immediately. “Everything was decorated in snot green,” says Victoria. “The carpet was green.

There were snot-coloured curtains.”

She started in the kitchen, where she painted the orange pine units in Farrow and Ball’s Pointing and used String, Drab and Off-Black on other features, instantly transforming it.

She and Charlie, who have two children, Roison, ten, and Finn, seven, have also done up the outhouses at the back of their home to create, Nunnington Studios, a cluster of creative workshops, including a jeweller and potter along with a tea room. “It’s wonderful having all this creative input right on our doorstep,” she says.

From here, Charlie runs a garden furniture showroom alongside Victoria’s interiors business and Farrow and Ball paints shop. Restoring old chairs, cupboards and tables, she makes use of things other people throw away. She has the knack for finding tatty old pieces of furniture and turning them into something special and is renowned for saving clients a small fortune by persuading them that they don’t have to rip out their old kitchens.

She learned how to pick up bargains at flea markets with her mother, a secretary, whom she recalls decorating their home with “fur” and “velvet” on a budget.

It was a bohemian upbringing and they lived in South Africa for five years. “One day my mother became a nomad. She loves adventure. It makes you more independent, stronger and far more self-sufficient,” she says.

“We always lived in an ‘anything goes’ house and we did things up on a shoestring. We always had to work to make things fantastic for nothing. I was painting furniture in my teens.”

Her mother, she says, was always writing and playing the piano. “She is very cultured and literary. We never had a fitted kitchen or anything like that. My mother’s attitude was, ‘Oh my God, can you imagine being the same as everyone else?’.”

Victoria believes good quality paint can transform the cheapest of furniture. “I give everything the Farrow and Ball treatment, it makes things classy,” she says.

Always on the lookout for a bargain, she changed the handles on her own existing kitchen units and bought an oak worktop cheaply on eBay.

She describes her look as vintage and shuns the tooperfect, minimalist look. “I don’t want clean lines, if there are holes in the ceiling or beams, you just bodge it up. It is all wonky. You see some kitchens that cost £75,000 to put in, but they’ve got no soul. Having a stylish interior isn’t about how much money you spend. I like things that are a bit battered and worn.”

This kitchen is clearly the heart of this family home and all the other rooms downstairs lead off from it.

“Every time we have a party, people never leave the kitchen. I can have 100 people and everyone will stay in the kitchen. People linger, and lean against the Aga.

It has just got that feel.”

The Gaelic expression Cead Mile Failte, which translates as a hundred thousand welcomes and is emblazoned on the airport runway in Victoria’s home city Cork every Christmas, is written on a board painted in Farrow and Ball’s Off-Black, her favourite colour.

Painted by a local signwriter, Elaine Bell, it captures the character of this home. “I have an open house policy.

I want people to feel they can walk in door and be welcome,” she says.

Elsewhere, Victoria has introduced her changes to the 400-year-old house gradually, so it wasn’t so much a shock to the system. It meant that, bit by bit, Charlie grew to love all the changes too. “Slowly and surely I waded my way through it. I did it very much on a budget.

We saved up, and then did a bit more. We were very lucky. We got a sofa from granny and artwork from friends. We had to be creative.”

Just off the kitchen, Charlie had already knocked down a wall to create a little snug, where the couple can keep an eye on the children or guests can relax and chat while meals are being prepared. The walls have been painted in string. A striking modern art canvas, painted in Farrow and Ball’s, colours was created by seven-year-old Finn using tester pots. Some of the other paintings are by a good friend, Julia Burns.

There are two armchairs, which cost £300 on eBay, linen curtains from Ikea and a second-hand mirror which was picked up for next to nothing. Victoria loves going to auctions and junk shops and points to a kitchen dresser painted in Farrow and Ball Drab which she bought for just £30. “Everyone wants it,” she says.

Victoria has found lots of things at car boot sales, where she rarely pays more than £5 or £10. “I never spend more than £20, unless it is a big piece of furniture.

That keeps me calm,” she says.

“The best place is the antiques and junk shops in the Shambles in Malton, you can dig out loads of things.

I am a real scavenger and I love to be original. Even if I won the Lottery, I would still be doing it.”

In the dining and sitting room, Victoria has used Off- Black, her favourite shade, in the alcoves to dramatic effect against the Clunch-coloured walls. Cupboard doors have been made cheaply using MDF, then given the slick, Farrow and Ball makeover treatment. Inexpensive Ikea linen curtains are trimmed with velvet to add a touch of luxury.

Plain, modern furniture from Ikea sits next to family pieces, full of history, from Charlie’s mother. “I love mixing old and new,” says Victoria.

An old pair of her mother-in-law’s crocodile shoes, in a tiny size 4, are displayed in a cabinet at the bottom of the stairs, where many people would place ornaments.

“I just love these,” says Victoria. “They’re gorgeous – and so tiny.”

There are old and new black and white family pictures on the stairway, some taken by their talented next door neighbour Tracey Phillips, of Ryedale Photography.

Charlie’s parents’ old bed from Nunnington Hall is in one of the bedrooms. “All the children were born in it. It is a special bed and it needs to be raggedy. It is what it is,” says Victoria. Other heirlooms from the Clives’ ancestral home include a beautiful painted bedroom table. On top of it sits a mahogany shoe lace box from an old draper’s store, which Victoria bought for £25.

There is another favourite saying on a wall plaque: “The reason angels can fly is that they take themselves so lightly.”

In the bathroom, where the classic white wash basin and pedestal cost just £15 each from eBay, Victoria painted the floor and woodwork to create a striking finish.

She tells me how running businesses is in the family’s blood. “My father, who sells country clothing, works for himself. My grandfather started a printing business, my great-grandfather started out selling notepaper.

We’re grafters.”

As I leave, I admire the collection of heart-shaped stones in the kitchen which she tells me the children collect for her. “That’s sweet,” I say. “Finn brought me a big one the other day and said ‘That’ll be £1.50,Mum,”

she laughs.

It look as though the family tradition is set to continue...

Victoria’s decorating secrets

1 Paint old pine furniture or kitchen units – anything that’s orange. Give it the Farrow and Ball treatment, reinvent whole thing. You can make anything look expensive with paint.

2 Don’t follow trends. If you love purple or pink velvet, go for it. Give your house personality.

3 Be individual on the cheap.

Car boot sales and junk shops help you to be daring without the price tag.

4 For a truly individual look, hit the hedgerows and country lanes and go mad. I use ivy to decorate all year round, it looks fab draped over mirrors and wrapped round curtain poles. It doesn’t shed or damage fabric. I pick cow parsley in July and August and put it in big glass vases. I don’t need to buy any flowers.

■Victoria Rose Interiors, Nunnington Studios, Low Farm, Nunnington, YO62 5UR 01439 748212

■ Caroline Lang jewellery, Nunnington Studios 01439-748385

■ Nunnington Pottery, 01439-748510

■ Sign writer Elaine Bell, 01751-431939

■ Ryedale photography, 01439-748484

■ Artist Julia Burns, 01439-788044 or juliaburns@redhenoriginals.co.uk