Me And My Home: A rescue home for flowers

Caroline Wingfield meets florist Mairead Curtin

Mairead Curtin is co-owned of flower company Rebel Rebel. She lives in Chiswick with her partner Dean and her two children, Flo and Oscar

We ended up in Chiswick by accident, really. My partner, Dean ,was working at Ealing Studios and we'd been looking around there for a house. We found one we loved, but had a survey done and it came back as the worst the surveyors had ever seen. It was a disaster. We were getting desperate and had to move out of where we were renting. We saw this place and went, 'Er, okay'. But I'm really pleased because I much prefer Chiswick to Ealing, being just that little bit further out of London.

"It's really green around here and brilliant for the children, Flo, 7 and Oscar, 8. We're near Chiswick Park and the beautiful Chiswick House. It's great because there's a really good café there with a big space out the front. You can go there and have a coffee and the kids can just run around and do whatever they want: climb trees, play football. If there isn't someone coming over to the house or they're not going over to someone else's house every day they're pretty shocked. When I pick them up from school they're all, 'What are we doing today, Mum?', and I say, 'We're going home first', and it's all, 'But Muuum'. They've got loads of friends who come over all the time and trash the place. I don't mind, the house is pretty child-proof.

"We didn't do anything to the house for years because we thought it wasn't really worth it while the children were small. We've not really done anything structural but we did put the kitchen in. It's my favourite part of the house. It's an open space that's full of light and opens on to the garden. I really like our bedroom, but we spend more time downstairs. We've got a big table which actually dictated the size of kitchen we'd need, we couldn't buy the house if the table didn't fit. If my friends come round we'll sit round the table and have a glass of wine, it's very sociable.

"Downstairs we've painted the floors black and the walls white. I didn't want carpet. I like having lots of air in the house: you don't get allergies and all that kind of stuff. I'd hate to have double-glazing. We were going to paint the floor a whitish colour but we soon realised with the white walls it would be a bit like a gallery. I can't understand all those different shades of white. If you've got nice lighting the room gets shadows in different places anyway. White doesn't feel like white. It would feel really stark if you didn't have anything else in the room, but if you've got other flashes of colour like flowers, pictures and carpets, it's fine.

"The living room is usually filled with toys; it's a constant battle. You get them all upstairs and then they all slowly make their way back downstairs. We have two very comfy sofas in there, both leather so they can be easily cleaned. God, I sound so completely and utterly practical! But when I read in magazines that people have these incredibly fantastic modern houses where there are no surfaces to put anything on, everything's hidden away, I just think, 'How do the hell do they do that?'

"An awful lot of our furniture and things are from Ikea or Habitat. Once you've painted a chest of drawers, or changed the handles, you personalise it. We have a big colourful flower print from Ikea which hangs in the living room. We would love to get real pieces of art, but you just don't ever have a thousand pounds hanging around. My favourite object is in the living room, it's a vase by Constance Spry. She was a florist in theTwenties and designed this vase specifically. I got it secondhand on Columbia Road in London. You can put pretty much anything in it, it's a really good wide shape and it fits on the mantle piece really nicely.

"My business partner Athena Duncan and I set up our flower business Rebel Rebel just over two years ago. We were both working at Carlton Television. She was a production manager and I was press officer. We've done flowers for the BBC, L'Oreal and Bafta, but now we're getting into planning the whole look of an event, including furniture and lighting. The house is usually full of half-dying flowers, rescued from whatever our last job was. We might have something like 800 inch-high roses left over after a job and often they just get dumped in the bin. I'll bring some back, but quite a lot of waiters actually ask if they can take them home for their girlfriends which is great as I really hate throwing them away.

"Chiswick is never going to be hip and trendy, it's not Notting Hill. But the high street has got everything you need. It's got the best butchers in London, a fantastic deli, and a brilliant chocolate shop. Until recently the only restaurants were either chains or fantastically expensive ones. But a friend of mine just opened up a restaurant near the river called Annie's. She completely went for the fact that a lot of people around here have kids and they want to come at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, which suits us.

"I like that we're near the river. The pub down there is absolutely packed on a Sunday. And we have a couple of local celebs living round the corner: Ant and Dec. A friend of mine's house backs on to where they live and her kids shout over the fence at them, 'Hey, it's Ant and Dec' and she's all, 'Leave the poor boys alone'.

Rebel Rebel (020 7701 7717) www.rebelflowers.co.uk