Ah, the romance of creativity! Excitement and despair! When you have a wild mind that refuses to be tamed.

Thomas swings freely through his days at Lescure, like a child at play in a universe that keeps growing bigger as he drops beliefs about linear time and what he can or cannot do. I’m equally selective about the reality I accept. Out with rule books and neatly packaged design solutions, in with fantasy, liberty and spontaneity. Together, if we can imagine it, we can make it happen. Our first guest bathroom is testament to our joint playful temperament, with all the fun and chaos that entails.

We were off to a slow start. I discovered that a dreamy and admittedly somewhat dim briefing – a concise “I just want to see the chapel from the bath tub” – doesn’t actually inspire plumbers, but paralyses them into doing nothing at all. Undeterred by my haziness and unexpected difficulties with cast iron and copper pipes, technical Thomas intervened and we’re almost done now.

The centrepiece is a vintage clawfoot tub that turned out to have a very strong personality, in spite of its old age and apparent infirmity. It demanded that we decorate around it in a way that lets it shine. So we did. We’ve left pipework visible and filled the space with unique finds and objects we love. It’s old meets new, vintage meets design, East meets West, with a bit of industrial thrown in. The formidable bath is very pleased indeed and keeps inviting us to go for a long soak. As we indulge in the bubbles, we tear our eyes away from Lescure’s chapel (oh yes!) to look around the room. And we decide we love it. It’s free-spirited eclecticism. It’s a wondrous mess. It’s us, curated.