Biography

Why would I choose such a tough, filthy and toxic line of work? To pay for my first house, that’s why.

I bought my first house at 18 too.  Buying and restoring that house back to its former Victorian glory set off another chain reaction that has followed me through life. Which is my love of interiors, design, colour, in fact anything to do with the transformative effect of decoration has me completely captured within it’s headlights.

After I could take no more caustic fumes from the stripping, I got the opportunity to go to LA and restore the antiques, rather than strip them in that vat of caustic. That was a great gig. Well it was until the Rodney King killing occurred and I had to come home. Being shot at kind of broke the spell a bit.

I came home and opened the first of 3 interiors shops and bought my second house.

This is when I got into paint effects and stencilling. I even had my own range of colours and paints, my self designed stencils and kits, all sold next to the restored antiques and reproduction pine furniture that was becoming incredibly popular in the late 80’s

I used all these paint effects and stencils to restore my little workers cottage, which was featured in House Beautiful magazine. I felt I had reached the pinnacle of my career with that one. A write up in an interiors magazine does not guarantee a thriving career however.

Still working as Culshaw Bell Interiors, I began site work. I was asked to restore the banqueting hall panelling and ceiling of a 17^th century local Hall that was undergoing a massive refurbishment. Which led me onto working for Sir Peter Moores on an 18 year rolling commission decorating his 18^th Century Hall. That kept off the streets and out of trouble for a bit.

My historical paint and restoration work was well under way now. However, I wanted to pursue interior and structural design, paint, colour and decoration.

Cue 3^rd house. Well actually it was a redundant banking hall in a local village. This gave me the canvas I wanted to really get my teeth into with the next chapter of Culshaw Bell Interiors. Alongside my new husband, I converted the banking hall into 3 flats, living in the large first floor flat, I really went to town decorating it with self designed furniture, colour and paint effects . That one was featured in Ideal Home magazine.

I had simultaneously been hand painting bespoke kitchens for a good few years. I was also designing furniture and kitchens for my new husband’s bespoke kitchen company.

Time to buy house number 4. This was going to be a forever home and as such no holds were barred restoring the knackered 17^th Lancashire farmhouse we bought together.

I have lived in this beautiful farmhouse ever since, bringing my children up, seeing my husband leave. All the while continuing on the career path I had forged out for myself all those years before.

However, once my children were happily leading their grown up lives elsewhere, I knew it was time to allow my free and adventurous spirt out of the bag. I’d had trouble with it all my life. Taking risks, seeking out challenges and pushing boundaries. But now I could explore even more of the life that inspired and delighted me.

I just didn’t realise it was going to take me down the narrowboat route. That one came out of the blue, I can tell you.

It was a post Covid drunken bath epiphany that did it. I was at a loss after breaking up with a boyfriend who lived on a canal boat. I just thought it would be a fabulous idea to use the skill set I had spent all my working life developing and set myself the challenge and subsequent boat life fun of restoring and refitting an historical narrowboat.

It was not supposed to be the traumatic, tear stained drain on my resources that it quickly became, though.

It took me 6 months hard labour to restore and refit the Dawn Piper. My intention was to Airbnb her, but she became so precious to me I couldn’t face strangers coming on board and trashing all my hard work. I Airbnb’d my precious farmhouse instead.

This income allowed me to spend time (and yet more money) on getting to know, move and moor my adored little boat.

Whilst I was doing that, I was also posting on Facebook. My humorous approach to the disasters I kept getting myself embroiled in whilst trying to learn about the boat came to the attention of a production company that were quietly scanning FB to find boaters to film for a pilot they were pitching to Channel 4 about narrowboaters and their varied lives afloat.

I was filmed along with other boater’s, being my usual boat idiot self, C4 commissioned the first series of Narrow Escapes.

Alongside the boat, filming and the farmhouse Airbnb, I began writing a book about my life and adventures. I found writing strangely cathartic. The Culshaw Bell Interiors side of my life was going pretty well also.

I wanted to push myself again with bespoke kitchens, paint effect and colour. Although I was still hand painting kitchens, I wanted to design a contemporary approach to painting luxury kitchens using subtle paint effects in my own bespoke colours.

I collaborated with one of the top bespoke kitchen companies in the country to create some really inspiring colour and paint effect combinations for their kitchens, then took it one stage further by designing and making pure silver leaf gilded splashbacks.

The pinnacle of the many interior magazines that featured this work was Elle Decoration.