Marilu’s husband, Gesines, had been aware of their future home long before they bought it, having once lived on the same street. ‘He always thought it was a lovely house, with its stained-glass windows,’ she explains. ‘So some years later, he approached the old woman who lived here, and asked her to let him know if she ever wanted to sell, and that’s how it came to be ours.’
Although picturesque on the outside, the interior was another story. ‘There was one main room and a bedroom, as well as a kitchen that was falling apart, and wind blew through the entire house.’ Added to which, there was asbestos and the woodwork was rotting.
‘It was in a terrible state,’ Marilu recalls, and yet she was totally won over by its untouched state. ‘It was super-charming. I like houses with a history, and here, everything was just as it had always been.’
The renovation took many years, with the couple working steadily room by room, making sure that there was always a space that felt liveable. ‘That was my one condition, before taking it on,’ Marilu recalls. ‘There always had to be one clean room!’
The couple were keen to preserve the authentic style of the house, but first it had to be made habitable, which involved stripping everything out and installing a better kitchen and insulation. Where he could, Gesines reused old materials, but when this wasn’t possible, he replicated the original designs. The box-bed in their study is a good example. ‘It’s a copy of what had been there; it’s entirely new, but feels beautifully old,’ says Marilu.
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While Gesines took the lead with the DIY side of the renovation, Marilu supplied the creative vision. ‘My taste is eclectic, and it can be hard when you like a lot of different styles,’ she says. ‘I’m full of ideas and I find it difficult to choose – I always want to change things!’
In the end, in order to accommodate all her ideas, she settled on specific themes for each room, allowing her the creative freedom to experiment as much as she liked, without having to commit to just one look.
In the bedroom Marilu looked to chinoiserie-inspired wallpapers as a starting point, and worked from a palette of blues and pinks.
The result is quirky and fun, and full of pretty touches. For the kitchen she took a more traditional route and settled on simple cabinets and a checkerboard floor: part cosy country kitchen, part diner.
In the 1960s- and 1970s-influenced living room and dining room, Marilu gave full rein to her love of vintage, an interest fostered by her mother. ‘Like her, I attach great importance to the story behind things – that vase from grandma, the tobacco pot from grandpa… things don’t have to have any value beyond their emotional value.’
When furnishing the house, she sought out pieces from the 1920s to the 1980s, and she particularly enjoys mixing up her finds to create vignettes featuring unexpected pairings: an Art Deco sideboard with a 1970s lamp, for example.
A love of bold colours pulls it all together: deep plum and aubergine in the kitchen; a rich orange-yellow and intense, bright blue in the main living areas; and pretty, feminine wallpapers in the bathroom.
The woodwork throughout the house is a warm cream, which works as a unifying thread and smart contrast to the colours and patterns. ‘This is a dark house,’ says Marilu, ‘so white is deadening; it doesn’t sparkle. But this cream is just right.’
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Despite her bold colour choices, she has no time for tester pots. ‘Testing a colour? Never. I do the entire wall at once,’ she laughs. ‘Sometimes it doesn’t work and I have to repaint it, which Gesines isn’t always happy about, especially when he has to take things off the wall.’
Marilu is always busy with her house in her head, finding inspiration everywhere: in gardens, museums, on the streets, Instagram, in music and films, especially those of Pedro Almodóvar, she says. ‘Something will inspire me – a red flower, say – and sooner or later the concept has made its way into the house.’
Two or three times a week, she does a quick walk through the local thrift store on the lookout for interesting things. ‘The large pieces of furniture always remain the same, but everything around them changes regularly,’ she says. ‘It never looks the same here for very long.’
With the recent completion of a summerhouse in the garden, Marilu has gained a new canvas on which to express herself. Just like in the house, striking colours and patterns abound, and it is furnished with vintage items. Large windows connect the summerhouse to the garden beyond, creating a seamless, semi-tropical atmosphere.
‘We wanted a space from which to enjoy the garden all year round,’ she says. Gesines’s design was inspired by various period properties they both liked, and the floor tiles that Marilu had ordered even before he started construction. She enjoys the tranquility of this new space, and sits there often, ‘with Gesines, and the cat, and a cup of coffee,’ and her thoughts busy with plans for her next project.
Follow Marilu @vintagelu
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