Saving The Manor EP01 - Saving The Donkey
I know, I know! We are totally useless when it comes to blogs, but as you can imagine, we barely have any time left in the day to do them. However, we thought we must do one about each of the episodes that we completed and a bit of a behind the scenes view on what happened and what they didn’t include in the episode!
We always said if we have one chance to do a TV Show we are going to work our asses off to make it the best show we can, definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity!
The Stables (BEFORE)
The Tack Room (BEFORE)
The Coach House (BEFORE)
As well as the filming, we had a photographer who came before we started the works and after.
Many early mornings and late nights getting it finished… spot all the glass panes that were either broken or cracked that Borja had to replace by cutting and fitting new.
SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched it, we will be talking about everything we have done.
The show was recorded pretty naturally, the first episode was the first set of spaces we worked on when we closed the rental accommodation for the winter. We actually thought it would be easy to complete the spaces as we weren’t changing too much of the original spaces… in our eyes, it was more of a ‘fit out’. My god were we wrong!
There were SO many things we had to do for each of the spaces that just couldn’t fit in the show:
Introducing gas and electrics from the street into the building, we spent 2 days drilling a massive hole underground, I considered what my life had come to several times while doing that.
We manually were chipping away remnants of concrete from the floor in the coach house which is made of victorian blue bricks.
We were on our knees cleaning with brick acid all the floors to bring them back to life before we sealed them.
The complexity of introducing electrics and heating whilst pretty much keeping all the original brick walls exposed.
The bricks we removed creating the new door opening we had to individually clean them up so they could be reused in a new location.
You know, all the typical boring stuff that no one wants to see but finishes the space off properly and makes it all function properly.
The biggest job was the windows and doors…every time we restore a window and door on the estate, we forget how long they actually take to do. which let me break it to you… it takes a bloody long time restoring it in the right way. Restoring the monster coach house doors were just daunting from the outset. Behind the scenes we had the assistance of both our mothers, god bless them. One working on assembling the flat pack furniture that would make up the workshop and the other stripping the paint off all the doors.
Dean is notoriously never late for anything so when we agreed with production the date we would finish these spaces he made sure we stuck to it! However we almost had a break down when the supplier that we had to supply and install quartz worktop for the coach house said they couldn’t do it… 2 days before the reveal!!! We started calling lots of companies and although we ended up paying double what we originally were going to pay we found a company that could do it in such short notice. Now that’s a commitment to a deadline!!
The Servants Quarters:
We finally finished the accommodation off as part of episode one! Finally after many months working on it. It was just the wallpaper that needed hanging in the old linen room which Sand and Sushi replicated perfectly from the original. Not going to lie when in the show we went into the room I (Dean) was a little nervous as it didn’t look like what i imagined it would. However, we quickly discovered that it was because of the white light bulbs they have to use when recording the show, it made everything look clinical (something you wouldn’t notice when watching the show) so we couldn’t truly appreciate it until the ‘normal’ warm white bulbs went in.
The Tack Room (AKA Deans Office) with Tony pride of place!
The Antiques Visit:
The best part of the episode for us was going antiques hunting, I mean who doesn't like that! Slightly surreal having our car rigged up with cameras recording our entire journey to the place, no picking our noses or foul language…. Borja! haha. Also it was probably the first time we had recorded in public. Now recording on the estate is fine as it in your own home, no one is watching you…. well except the 16 person crew in production! You can guess who is writing this now (Dean). I am not one for attention, i hate it, that’s why I love Borja, in a social setting the spotlight is always on him as he is the chatterbox so its great for me. So we just naturally had to chat away as we searched for some treasures.
No I didn’t get all the chairs i actually wanted, Borja put his foot down… a rare occasion but definitely justified! He let me have the one office chair, which i can confirm looks beautiful but is the most uncomfortable chair ever… totally style over comfort.
…and Tony! Definitely the gem we found on the trip, he sits right at home in the tack room even if he looks a little bit like he’s the lord of the Manor looking down on the stablehands that would have worked there. We haven’t changed his name… its still Tony.
What we completed in the workshop at the end of episode 0ne
THE WORKSHOP WALL YOU DON’T SEE:
There was one space in the workshop we couldn’t finish in Episode One and that was so beautifully hidden with the cameras you would never have spotted it. That is the entire right side of the workshop which now contains the huge bank of units. Within this space had the consumer unit and the boiler that supplied all the services to the hayloft above. So we couldn't fit these cupboards until upstairs was complete (which was episodes 3, 6 & 8). So like magic it seems like the workshop is complete in episode one but in fact it wasn’t completed until that last episode so that’s why we decided to reintroduce it again in episode 8 dressed in a different way yet fully complete.
The bank of units we completed when all the services were connected up for the later episodes
Livestock in the Stables for the first time in over 100 years, it was a special moment
THE DONKEY AND PONIES MOMENT:
Borja was genuinely shocked when he saw the ponies in the stables, as he is normally in his little bubble and doesn’t really pay attention to his surroundings so he was completely oblivious to the whole event of handling and moving the ponies from the front of the estate to get the ponies into the stables. Also the trailer had arrived earlier in the morning and if only he looked out of the window when waking up, he would have spotted it.. Our friend Chris is well known at making very random conservations and going off on a tangent, so when I put him on the mission to distract him, Borja’s brain didn’t clock that something was going on.. he just thought oh ‘typical chris!’.
A quick note that although I loved to see Borjas priceless reaction, after 10 minutes the stables smelt well, very ‘farmy’ very fast so I think an afternoon with the ponies was as much as I could handle… luckily Borja agreed too!
The messy task of removing all the paintwork from the bricks through soda blasting
For any “horse” people out there, the ponies were constantly watched by the owner who was at the Estate, the ponies were in the stables for about 30 minutes, they really were the stars of the show and went back to their own comfortable stables after the surprise, not before having a little walk around the gardens.
For us, the first episode really encompassed and showed our approach to working on historic spaces… Celebrate as much as you can all the original details and elements that have historic value and significance. All of what we added to these spaces if removed would not change the space itself from what it has always been its entire life… we may have changed its name and use but its form is still what it was. It’s a harder route to follow when it comes to design but we like to think the house will thank us for it and future generations that will enjoy this building will too.
We will definitely share more on the details of all the spaces soon and what colours we used, what products we sourced to fit the spaces out and more photos of the finished rooms.
