Nothing more than the usual.

“Time is moss-green, damp. It lies on branches, serpentine. It sways to some breath we can’t feel, a noiseless call; and sheds its skin to show a newer green. Anachronisms, we walk here as thin as ghosts, our inconstant color shadowless. No sound laps this island of years, but the drip of rain from a tree-top so far above us we can count to ten as each drop falls. Silent, we watch green wrap away the hour, our day, summer and an age of mind; and scan the huge hemlock giant near us, to find it rooted in a dead tree-trunk. Sustained by truisms of pattern, form, we return grateful into sun, backs cold from the green garden.”

In the Rain Forest - Beth Singer Bentley

Designer Rupert converted this outbuilding on his property into a lovely rustic home for his son. 

Cozy living room. Old roofing battens were fixed to the plaster ceiling to create the impression of rafters.

A keen carpenter, Rupert took charge of the woodwork – he used tulipwood to make the kitchen units and island, which are painted in ultramarine blue. Reclaimed laboratory surfaces were used for the worktop and salvaged pine for the floor.

The open-plan living space leads through a corridor, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling in reclaimed pine, to the bedroom and the bathroom.

Rupert sourced light fittings from reclamation yards and auctions, and furniture from the antique market.

Almost nothing in the cabin is new. I was upcycling before it was fashionable,’ Rupert says. ‘Old things are precious. I treasure them’.