Red Lion - mission accomplished

Reloved Vintage helps with dining room redesign at The Red Lion pub in Stathern, Leicestershire

Last month, I told you about our exciting project with The Red Lion in Stathern, Leicestershire.

Now, after getting through many sheets of sandpaper, several tins of paint, a whole load of varnish and a lot of hard work, the job is complete and the pub looks great.

The Red Lion's dining room before...

 

...and after!

On top of stripping and repainting all the dining room’s tables and picture frames, we were asked to act as design consultants for the whole project.

The owners had already decided on the general colourscheme and flooring they wanted, and Laura was able to make suggestions on which paints would best compliment each other for the walls and wood paneling.

We also suggested a shelf of food and cookery related books – and provided a few vintage pieces to add a little more rustic charm to an already beautiful room.

We’re delighted with how the room looks – the decorators and flooring teams have done a superb job and the owners, Ben and Sean, brought their own ideas to the table and have come up with some really great, eye-catching talking points. Everyone at The Red Lion was a delight to work with and we wish them every success for the future.

It’s a great pub, with amazing food – we very highly recommend paying a visit.

We're going down the pub

Reloved Vintage helps with interior design of Red Lion in Stathern

We’re delighted to tell you all that we will be spending the next few weeks on an exciting new project with one of our absolute favourite local businesses. We’re helping The Red Lion, in Stathern, Leicestershire, with the makeover of its main dining room – which means we’re going to be stripping and painting a LOT of tables!

The dining room. Photo courtesy of greatfoodclub.co.uk

As well as reloving the furniture, we’ve been asked by bosses Ben and Sean to help with design aspects of the room – our first ever job as interior design consultants!We’re so utterly chuffed to have been asked to get involved. The Red Lion, in the beautiful Vale of Belvoir, has a Michelin Bib Gourmand and is the sister pub of the Michelin-starred Olive Branch, just up the road from us in Clipsham, Rutland.The whole project should be finished by mid August and we can’t wait to show you the finished results.

A visit to Sugden and Daughters

On Saturday we called in to see Louisa at Sugden and Daughters in their fantastic new sales space at the Red Lion pub in Yardley Hastings, Northanmptonshire.

Our paths have crossed online through their Facebook page and as a result of us both having a space at Finders Keepers at Lollyrocket in Kettering, but we'd never met in person.

We'd watched the transformation of the barn in Yardley Hastings as Louisa and husband Mark turned it from unloved shell to rustic showroom,so it was great to see it in person.

The showroom at the Red Lion

We love the rustic pieces

Sugden and Daughters sell a great range of antiques, painted furniture, candles and other vintage splendidness as well as being a stockist of Little Greene paint. Until now they had been concentrating on antiques fairs - and these will still be a key part of the Sugden and Daughters business - but when the opportunity to establish a permanent sale space came up, it was too good to turn down.

Want!

Close-up of the sales desk - soon to be sold!

Laura would have been in this photo,
but she hadn't done her hair...

It's a set-up that works well for both parties - Sugden and Daughters bring in new customers for the pub and the pub opens up a whole new audience to Sugden and Daughters. We'd love to see more of this going on across the country. We're always hearing about how many pubs are closing in the UK every week - it's a staggering number and a real shame, so we have to take our hats off to The Red Lion and Sugden and Daughters for this initiative.

We were only there for an hour or so, but saw just how impressed the customers were with the showroom. Louisa says the customers have been a mixture of villagers and people who have been following them on social media, so the system obviously works.

It was only their second weekend of trading and things are going well, with plenty of sales and a whole bunch of new customers. Louisa and Mark have been working so hard on getting this right that it can only be a success and we wish them all the best for the future.

Go along and take a look for yourself - and buy yourself something so you can say you owned a Sugden and Daughters piece before they were famous...