The serenely elegant country house of the couple behind Our Food Stories
“We have such busy lives,” say Laura and Nora, the couple behind the popular recipe and design blog Our Food Stories. “We want our home to be a place to calm down.” It's difficult to imagine a more tranquil environment than their country house in a village north-east of Berlin, where they have created a wonderfully elegant and pared back interior out of the community's former schoolhouse.
While both Laura and Nora were born in Berlin, Laura had lived in the village as a child, and it was then that her family acquired the schoolhouse, buying it at auction as a kind measure to allow their neighbours to keep living there when it was in danger of being repossessed. With the former owners still in residence, it was impossible to renovate, but when Laura's father presented the couple with the keys on their wedding day (and the last tenant decided to move out shortly after), the time was ripe to strip it back and start again.
“It was very ugly,” says Laura. “There was no grass or flowers outside, and the old windows had been replaced with plastic ones.” Nora agrees: “the decoration was very much in the 1960s East German style, cheap doors, cheap wooden floors, and then cheap carpets glued to the floor. The bones of the building were in good shape, but everything on the inside needed replacing." The house had been split into flats, which didn't help; the expansive former classroom that is now the kitchen and dining room was a flat of its own, with three small rooms, and the floor had been cut up to allow heating pipes to run through it. So everything went: floors, doors, windows, partitions, even ceilings in some of the upstairs rooms.
They now have a series of spacious, airy rooms at their disposal. The showstopper, of course, is the kitchen, a generous space with a dining area at one end. Having previously lived in an apartment in the village, Laura and Nora were able to bring along most of their deVOL kitchen from that space to the new house, and added some more cabinets, along with Arabescato marble countertops and a huge island with a warm copper top. A smart new oak parquet floor and an informal limewash paint from Bauwerk have completed the transformation of the former dingy flat into the workspace they always dreamed about. “It is absolutely our favourite room and the one we spend most time in,” they say.
Upstairs they have created a luxuriously vast bedroom and bathroom, removing the ceiling in the former so that the space opens right up into the eaves of the house, with the original wooden beams in between. Disliking the usual bulk of wardrobes that can take up so much volume in a bedroom, Laura and Nora have banished theirs to a corridor, creating a calm, airy space with a log burner and armchair to relax in, and a low bench to display objects. The bathroom, meanwhile, functions almost as an extra sittng room, with the unusual addition of a cast iron spiral staircase in the middle which leads into an office space.
The aesthetic of the interiors was very much influenced by Scandinavian design; the couple have travelled widely in the region and have a holiday house there. “We bought some new pieces from our favourite Scandinavian brands,” the pair say, “but we wanted also to find things with a story, with a sense of the past.” A lot of the things that might at first glance appear to be original architectural details are in fact salvaged, such as the beautiful glazed doors in the kitchen and the iron columns in the sitting room. “They look like they're holding the ceiling up, but actually their only purpose is to look nice," laughs Laura. This desire to make the past a presence in the house is also the reason why many of the walls are left unfinished. “This felt like the only way to see the history in the house,” she explains.
Nature is another big influence for the couple; it plays a huge part in their styling and photography, which is always full of seasonal foods and flowers. There is very little that is synthetic or plastic in the design; wood, stone and metal form most of the hard surfaces, and linen and wool predominate in the soft furnishings. “We have avoided dyed materials,” they explain, “because as soon as you impose a colour on something, it loses its natural character.” The house also benefits of course from direct access to nature, which the couple hugely appreciates as a contrast to their urban life in Berlin. They have a terrace to sit on in the warm weather, and can wander straight out with their two dogs into the countryside. “We've been working here for a while,” they say, “and so we know where all the fruit trees are and where the wild flowers grow in the woods.” The next step in the house's development? The garden. “We have grass now and a few roses,” they say, “but the garden will be the next 20 years in the making.” We'll make a mental note to come back and see it in a decade or two.
Owen Gale1/14Raw unfinished walls frame a view to the door to the terrace.
Owen Gale2/14Looking from the sitting room into the dining area, with the transition marked by a pair of purely ornamental iron columns found as salvage.
Owen Gale3/14One of Laura and Nora's favourite sources for furniture is Frama in Copenhagen, where they bought their round marble dining table, as well as the pendant light hanging above.
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Owen Gale5/14Laura and Nora found the vintage arched doors early in the project, and the kitchen turned out to be the perfect place for them. The space has an oak parquet floor from Floors of Stone.
Owen Gale7/14Laura and Nora also have a ‘garden kitchen’ downstairs which opens straight onto the outdoor space, and is most often used for washing their two spaniels. The armchair is from Danish brand by Lassen.
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