Makeover: At Home With the Grants

We go inside the home of Fame Academy voice coaches David and Carrie Grant - and, with the help of Trading Up's Lucy O'Connor (left), makeover their house

Sunday Mirror 2/1/2004

David and Carrie Grant's £500,000, five-bedroom home is
hidden away in the corner of a small close in Southgate, North
London. David and Carrie moved there 18 months ago with their
daughters Olivia, eight, and Talia, two, and are slowly creating
their ideal home. The huge garden stretches quarter of the way round
the circular close and has a bouncy castle and swimming pool.

Inside, the huge lounge has been renovated, but the worst spot in
the house was the brown 70s-style kitchen - but not any more. We
sent top interior designer and new face of BBC1's Trading Up, Lucy
O'Connor, to give it a stylish makeover and banish that 70s feel
forever.

Lucy says: `It's a 1920s house so I've put a lot of art deco
elements into the kitchen to go with the style of the building -
vintage vases, black and white pictures, and a Robert's radio, which
is classic vintage, but also very trendy right now. Because Carrie
and David are such vibrant characters, I wanted to inject a lot of
colour, especially because the basic shades are just greys and
blacks. There's a friendly laid-back feel to the kitchen - the
pictures are just leaning on the surfaces and there are lots of
flowers, which Carrie absolutely loves.'

CARRIE AND DAVID

ON THE KITCHEN

What was wrong with the kitchen before?

Carrie: Everything. It was totally 70s. I'm sure it was beautiful
back then, but the units were all beige, the floor tiles were brown,
and there was a fake dropped ceiling so the whole room felt cramped.

What's your favourite aspect of the new kitchen?

C: I love the breakfast bar. Everything in our house revolves around
the kitchen and that table. At 5pm the whole family will be sitting
round it, mine and David's phones will be going, we'll be feeding
Talia, Olivia will be doing her homework and friends are usually
popping in and out too.

David: I'm not the best cook in the house, but I'm definitely the
most enthusiastic, so I love the cooker. We regularly cater for 70
people just because we like having people round, and in our old home
it was difficult to fit two massive cauldrons on the hob, but this
cooker is great - and we've got two ovens.

C: And he wants another one when we re-build the utility room.

Who cooks when you entertain?

C: The two of us cook together - and we usually start singing.

D: It sounds like we live in a cheesy musical, but our house is
always full of singing. Olivia also joins in and we all harmonise.

Who does the washing-up?

C: David. In fact, last week he was out and I decided to make an
effort and tidy up, but I had to call him to find out where the soap
goes in the dishwasher.

D: We've only had a dishwasher for the past five years, and for the
first year and a half I'd wash everything by hand anyway - I didn't
trust it. One night I was clearing up after one of our parties and
decided to try it out - and it worked. I woke Carrie up at 2am to
tell her.

C: I just thought, what's happened to us that this is what's
considered exciting at two in the morning.

ON THE LOUNGE:

Why didn't you like this room before?

C: The carpet was a grey/blue colour and was completely worn. We
decided to go for wooden floors because when people come in from the
pool, a carpet gets soggy.

D: The girls love the wooden flooring - this room has become their
dance studio.

What's the most expensive item in the room?

C: The blue sofas and the grey chair are the only things we spent a
lot of money on. The sofas are from Heal's and we did go a bit
overboard with them, but they're the first sofas we've ever bought
in the 18 years we've been together.

D: We tried to find sofas in places like IKEA, but we didn't see
anything we liked.

Do the two of you have the same taste when it comes to design?

D: I trust Carrie - she has an eye for design. We've got a trunk in
the lounge which Carrie spotted. I didn't like it, but eventually
she persuaded me to buy it.

C: We paid pounds 30 for it, got it home, and it turned out to be an
1855 Louis Vuitton travel trunk. Now it's worth upwards of £10,000.

Have you stolen any ideas from other celebrity houses you've
visited?

C: We got the idea for floor lights from Mel C. We were giving her
voice coaching at her house a few years ago and I said, `When I
move, I have to get those floor lights.' They create a lovely mood.
It's great in the evening because they reflect off the windows and,
as Olivia says, they make the rain go all glittery.

How do you relax in the lounge?

C: There's no television, only music.

D: It's the chill-out room. We listen to all sorts. We've had Daniel
Bedingfield on a lot recently and of course we listen to our
students - Will Young, Lemar, and Alex Parks from Fame Academy. It's
hard to get out of `voice coach' mode though. Sometimes we'll have
something on in the background and we'll be chatting away then
suddenly we'll stop and say, `Did you hear that? That was really out
of tune.'

THEIR HOME:

What's your dream house?

C: This one. I love having a beautiful home that's not in a
pretentious area. I can still go out in my Asda trackie bottoms and
no one cares. The only thing missing is a beach next to our pool.

D: I also love this house but I'd prefer it if the pool was indoors,
and I'd like a few more acres of land. I grew up in a small flat in
Hackney, East London, where there were lots of people in a very
small area. I loved the sense of community, but it did make me
appreciate space.

Do you spend a lot on interiors?

C: We're not materialistic. Neither of us are into buying things for
status' sake, but I like my surroundings to be aesthetically
pleasing. So we've got a mix of more expensive designs and high
street items. I was brought up in a semi in Enfield, Essex, and I
generally find it hard to spend obscene amounts of money.

D: I don't - at least not on Carrie, but otherwise we don't go over
the top. We're not cheap, but so many people buy things for the
impression they give others. We do the opposite. We'll buy what we
like wherever it's from.

That's not very `celebrity'...

C: I know, but for a number of years we were very poor - our early
years of marriage were such a struggle. Success is great, but if it
left us now we'd be happy just being together.

D: We're not happier now, we've just got more rooms to be happy in.

When was the low point?

C: David's music career suddenly stopped when we first got married -
he had a few hits in the 80s. At the same time I was in hospital
because I have Crohn's disease, so we were very poor. I remember
searching through pockets to find enough money to eat.

D: But even when we had very little money, we chose to spend it on
voice coaching, because we wanted to be better singers. We never
intended to actually become voice coaches. Little did we know the
money we invested in those lessons would get us where we are now.

DAVID'S FAVE

David's favourite spot in the house is the bar.

`When we first saw the house, I said to Carrie, "That bar has got to
go", but she said, "The bar's the best thing in the house, you
idiot." Now I've grown to love it. It's an amazing blue and grey
ceramic tile mosaic on a concrete frame. I'm not usually a luxury
person, but it's the one thing in the house that serves no purpose -
and I like that. It's not really functional - you can pour drinks
anywhere - it's just fun.'

CARRIE'S FAVE

Carrie's favourite objects in the house are her home-made cushions.

`I tend to go for one colour when I'm decorating a room, but in the
lounge we've got two blue sofas and one grey chair, so I wanted
something to tie the two together. I decided to make some cushions
myself, which was a lot cheaper. I just went to John Lewis, picked
out fabrics and bought cushions to go inside. I love sewing and
tapestry - I find it really therapeutic. That's sad, isn't it?'