How Alexandra Tolstoy made a rental house her own

I found out that we could rent this house.

And the guy managing it told me that I had a gap

of 10 days from the moment the old tenants moved out.

So, in these 10 days,

I did absolutely everything that you can see.

[jazzy piano music]

I grew up, first of all in Somerset,

and then in Oxfordshire.

My father is partly Russian

and my mother's completely English.

So, I absorbed very much from both sides.

But when I was 18, the Soviet Union collapsed,

and my father suddenly said to me, right, this is it,

you're going to live in Moscow for six months

on your gap year.

And it was gray,

there were queues to buy even milk or bread,

but I completely fell in love with Russia.

It was just something hugely magnetic for me.

I thought it changed the course of my life really.

I come from the Tolstoy family

and my father is the head of the whole Tolstoy family.

It's quite a big family

and he is the eldest of the eldest branch.

And so, Leo's a distant cousin.

We have a common ancestor, I think, in the 18th century.

But it was a very unusual family in Russia

in that it had an unusual number of artists,

writers, ministers.

Another one, my favorite one,

he got his whole body tattooed from top to toe,

and in the 18th century he walked from Kamchatka,

on the east coast of Russia, all the way to St. Petersburg,

and then married a gypsy, and fought a duel,

and was friends with Pushkin.

I feel very lucky and proud to be part of that family.

So, when we first came here,

the people who, sort of, came and went,

Oh, well, obviously, this will be your sitting room,

'cause it's the bigger part of the of this room.

And it was my son who said to me,

No mum, it's much better

that we have the table in the big part

and then the sitting room

is the really cozy little part.

These amazing curtains, they're felt

and really lovely and heavy,

but the most amazing thing about them is this border.

They're all the illustrations of Pushkin's fairy tales

as done by Belibin who was a very famous illustrator.

They were embroidered, patchwork,

I mean, just truly works of art.

I love very earthy colors

and, for me, the fireplace, this was the perfect place

for our icons.

We always want to have somewhere in the house

which is a, sort of, central place.

This is St. Spyridon who's the Tolstoy patron saint,

and his remains are on Corfu.

Ivan, where's Ivan gone?

Oh, here.

I bumped into a friend of mine.

She said, I've got this dream to ride the Silk Road

on a horse and camel.

And I thought, Yes, this is the thing.

And we spent nine months riding the Silk Road.

And during that time,

that's when I first rode through Kurdistan

and it made a massive impact on me.

And it was the place I wanted to return to the most.

These plates I've collected, they're Russian,

[plates clattering]

made by this famous Russian porcelain factory

in the 19th century,

and you can see the coat of arms on them.

But they made them for the central Asian market.

So, they have this very Asian, Uzbek feeling.

I just adore them.

None of them are the same.

I don't have any rules and I don't want rules, really.

A lot of people told me,

Don't have your dining room table here.

And I don't believe in that stuff.

I just believe in what makes me and my children feel good.

This is a lovely Spode plate.

And look at how great it looks with that.

So, this amazing portrait is by my friend Craig Hanna,

who's American,

and he did it when we lived in Chelsea

and, obviously, had a much bigger space to hang it in,

but, obviously, I'm not gonna lose it here.

And I love that it's just, kind of, unabashed.

We've hung it in a small space.

And I'm holding my grandmother's Russian doll

which is actually on the fireplace over there.

This is actually Swedish.

But it just, immediately I loved it,

because, obviously, this color looks so good

with the Pimlico green.

So, the photographs of the children

are by Edward Mapplethorpe, who's the brother of Robert.

And he is very specific.

He only photographs them when they're one year old,

not younger, not older,

and they're not allowed to be wearing anything,

and he has them in a studio.

And I had to go out, so I'm not even in there,

and he did one of them serious, middle, and smiling.

And he said to me at the time,

You know, when they're older,

you'll look back and see all their characters there.

And it's so true.

[jazzy trumpet music]

Once I knew that this would be the sitting room,

well, obviously, is not that big,

so I knew that I wanted a sofa

that really, really maximized on the space.

I wanted it square, I don't want big arms,

and so this shape is from Love Your Home.

It's just absolutely perfect.

And I also wanted it in the same,

it's Volga Linen, the upholstery,

and it's the same as we had in our old house

because it's just a really good background color for these.

And I kept these love chintz cushions we had,

'cause they're very special, with the soldiers on.

This rug is from Luke Irwen,

and I went through all Luke's rugs,

and this was just the dream

because it pulls out every single color

that comes into this house.

We have a lot of this yellow ochre, the red, the blues,

and I feel that it's the, kind of, final glue

which holds it all together.

[jazzy trumpet music]

This is an edit of my favorite parts from our old house.

This was in my son's bedroom,

and it just was a bit lost, you know.

It was on a, kind of, a high up shelf.

It's a Victorian butcher's scene.

And then this was actually a Christmas decoration.

The Polish make them out of old sweet papers.

And I used to only get it out at Christmas

and then I thought, why?

I just, I love it, and it looked sort of fun there.

[horse squawks] [Alexandra laughs]

[jazzy piano music]

For me, the kitchen is absolutely the heart of my home.

I bake and I bake every single day.

This is an antique, I just adore it.

And it's really practical.

I think people have got stuck

in a mindset of you have to have a fitted kitchen.

You don't have to have a fitted kitchen

you don't have to have fitted bathroom

you don't have to.

You just need to, obviously, I need a space to cook on,

to store stuff, and, actually, I think what can happen

is when you have these 100s of these cupboards,

they just fill up with rubbish, really.

I love, on Instagram, looking for antique dealers.

And I found an amazing guy in Anglesey

who I got that reclaimed ship's light from.

The curtains, all the curtains in the house,

all came from our old home,

and just resized them and from different places.

So, they've kind of found new homes.

These were in our drawing room

and now they're here and they're just really perfect.

So, the floor, we ripped out this laminate

and then there were these boards

and they're a nice shape,

but they weren't a very special color.

So, I decided to paint them the same color as the woodwork,

this blue, black.

And here I like it 'cause I know I make a lot of coffees,

I bake a lot of cakes,

and I think the children probably get

a lot of chocolate bowls out of this cupboard.

So, it's particularly worn here

and there where the dog goes out of the door.

So, it's quite touching

'cause it's, sort of, our story.

Here I've collected, as you can see, lots of Russian china.

So, my method with eBay always involves the words antique

and often involves the word Russian,

and Kuznetsov and Gardner,

who are the names of the two famous porcelain factories.

And this I adore, it's a shrine.

She makes shrines and it's got our aga in it.

So, when I came here, they had a bed like this going here.

But I quickly realized,

if I did that I wouldn't have any storage.

And I had found this wonderful wardrobe

that I wanted to have.

And I also love sleeping like that

'cause my children often come down

and it feels very welcoming 'cause they come straight in.

But I've had a lot of people telling me,

Oh, it's bad Feng Shui,

you shouldn't be sleeping like that.

But, again, I think you just do, you know,

what works for you rather than obeying some kind of rule.

So, this chair was in my cottage

so I think the patchwork must be 100 years old.

It's made in that way, you know, when it's not sewn,

it's kind of stuck, but you must use things.

I don't wanna have things like a museum.

So, I don't mind that it's worn out a bit.

These cushions are what I sell on the Tolstoy Edit.

They're Russian roller fabric and I adore them,

but I'd actually bought them and put them in my son's room

and they, kind of, didn't really work there.

And then every night, inevitably,

I have one child sleeping with me, but they all kick me.

So, this is the most perfect bolster cushion

which we have under the duvet,

and I don't get kicked anymore.

These cushions I'd had from before.

These curtains I brought from,

he's called Tradchap on Instagram.

So, the walls in here are light blue,

which is Farrow & Ball's light blue.

And I didn't do the blue, black woodwork in here,

'cause I wanted it to be more, sort of, light

and more feminine, really.

So, on the walls, well, on this wall,

I've got the most amazing collection

of these sailor's valentines.

The story around them is that the sailors sent them

to their valentines, back in the 19th century,

as love tokens.

But, actually, I think these ones might have been made

in Barbados where they were made by local women

for, sort of, commercial souvenirs.

Together, with Benedict and SJ Axleby,

we've done this amazing collaboration for the Tolstoy Edit

to do contemporary versions of sailor's valentine's.

So, this is my bathroom,

and, actually, I was very lucky with the structure

because, originally, in this house

this would've been another bedroom,

but the owners had made it into a bathroom

and it is the greatest luxury.

I just love this bathroom.

I love having the chair.

And my daughter often has a bath

and I'll read her a story.

These are old curtains from our other house.

This is by my friend Nathalie Farman-Farma

based on a Russian motif.

So, this cupboard I got from the Tolstoy Edit

is Russian and it's, actually, very unusual and rare

to find Russian furniture.

And this amazing, they're a Spanish Russian company,

came to me and said,

We'd love to do a big drawing on your wall.

So what I asked them to do is they took motifs

from this cupboard and I think it's worked so prettily.

They gave me a palette,

I chose the colors, and every single one of these

is hand painted, and I absolutely love it.

I found Scumble Goosie and they make panels.

These are just panels and you nail and glue them on.

And the room just felt so much warmer and cozier.

[jazzy trumpet music]

So, this is my middle son's room

and it was, sort of, very obvious it would be his,

even though it's the biggest, because he's the most active.

I hear him, he's above my room,

and I hear a lot of thumping and jumping

and he's got a lot of ropes and different paraphernalia

that he likes and it's amazing.

He's just got so much freedom in this room.

This is looking very tidy compared to normal.

This was an old school cupboard.

So, I think, I got it for the color,

but I think it's rather appropriate

with all the books in it.

All the wall lamps I've used, I had in our old house.

And then I got this flex from Pookie

and just did them externally

because I couldn't start, you know,

going under the plaster and everything.

I got this antique patchwork from eBay

and made a curtain and then got the handyman

to make these little shelves for his lead soldiers.

This I got, it's a chess, but he loves chess,

and inside he's got all his hammers and nails

and Swiss army knives and things like that,

water balloons.

And I've tried, you know, you can't crush your children

and he's a very creative child.

He loves making things

and I've really tried to give him as much freedom

as he possibly can have.

I wouldn't want a bigger house than this.

And if I bought this house, what would I change?

And I would not change anything. [laughs]

[jazzy trumpet music]