Alexandra Tolstoy's fairytale Oxfordshire cottage

This enchanting Oxfordshire cottage is perhaps not the most obvious Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler project. For a start it is tiny, and secondly its decora­tion has evolved piecemeal, retaining the personality of its owner, Alexandra Tolstoy, over the course of its various phases of redeco­ration. 'The spirit of the cottage hasn't changed much; it is still very much Alexandra,' affirms the Colefax designer Emma Burns, who was brought in nearly 10 years after Alexandra bought it, 'to edit, add to it and pull it together'.

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The building was originally a worker's cot­tage; the previous owners, who bought it from the local farm, had put in a bathroom and night storage heaters but done little more. Alexandra bought it in 2004 and had set about making it more comfortable and appealing when there was a huge flood in 2007. At this point, she brought in specialist plasterer Bob Wise, who lime-plastered the walls and ceilings as they would have been originally. He advised her to take out the wooden window sills - as cottages like this would have had plaster ones-and added plaster skirtings.

Right from the start, Alexandra says, she 'did not want to do the obvious' by modernis­ing the feel of the cottage, as many might have done. Her father gave her a book called English Cottage Interiors by Hugh Lander, which she 'read obsessively'; she gleaned from it the idea to paint all the woodwork a dark, treacly brown - 'Wainscot', mixed to order from Farrow & Ball, in a gloss finish - as it might have been painted originally. Her mother suggested vintage Bakelite light switches. And her aunt, the antiques dealer Vicky Heaton-Renshaw of Crowman Antiques in Devizes, helped her to start a collection of china and furniture that felt right for the cottage. 'My sister calls it "The Museum",' Alexandra says with a laugh.

Emma had already helped Alexandra and her husband with a huge project in Moscow. 'She was so brilliant, I've become almost scared of making my own decisions,' says Alexandra, who has also sought Emma's advice for their London home. Emma began with the kitchen, bringing in joiner Chris Bell to create units an inch shallower than the existing ones -a tweak that makes a huge difference to the sense of space. Elm was chosen for the worktops, the cupboard interiors were painted 'a crazy Delft blue', and mismatching handles were chosen for the doors to give 'a less fitted look'. A specially made gate, that looks as if it has always been part of the stairs, acts as the smartest of child safety gates, and the space under the stairs-once a bed for the previous owners' dogs - is now a cupboard. So without any drastic aesthetic change - the old Delft tiles Alexandra had put above the sink remained in place throughout -the kitchen just works and looks better.

Next door is an equally well-planned utility room and loo. Chris also made new bead-and­-butt doors for every room to replace the stripped-pine ones - again, bringing the cottage closer to how it once might have been. Instead of having new curtains made for each room, Emma had the old ones remade and hung them from antique metal poles- 'they are finer in scale than modern poles,' she explains. In the sitting room, she re-covered the sofa with a loose cover that can be removed to reveal a fitted cover in Rex Whistler's 'Clovelly' toile de Jouy underneath. Among other additions, a rug was bought from Gallery Yacou, an antique armchair in a wonderful old patchwork came from Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler Antiques, and a fire grate and dogs were found at Greenway Antiques in Witney.