SHARI AND YANNICK Grospellier had been talking about opening a restaurant since they returned to the UK from France ten years ago. Yannick had been working as a chef there, while Shari was teaching English. "Living in France was a dream, but we alwa
ys had this bigger dream of opening our own business," says Shari, who met her husband in 1991 when she spent a year out from university.
The couple moved to the Perthshire town of Crieff after buying Glenearn House in July last year. They had been living in Edinburgh prior to this with their two daughters, Zara, now seven, and Nina, five, and Yannick was working as regional group chef for Malmaison and Hotel du Vin.
"He was travelling all the time, which meant we could live pretty much anywhere," Shari explains.
Work took up their lives, though. "We were leaving each other Post-it notes as we didn't see each other all week," she recalls. "One day we just thought: this is daft."
It so happened that Glenearn House was on the market. Just a five-minute walk from the town centre and round the corner from Crieff Golf Course, the location presented the Grospelliers with a complete lifestyle change. The property had once been a boarding house for Morrison's Academy, where Shari went to school (her parents live in the town), so it immediately caught her eye – although latterly it had been run as a B&B.
"It was a nice house in really good condition but the interior…" Shari sucks in her breath: "It had to go. It was all shiny Anaglypta walls and big patterned carpets." She recalls how the carpets were lifted to reveal layer upon layer of vinyl flooring, and when they did eventually unearth the original floorboards it took her father and Yannick an entire weekend to remove the staples that had been punched into the timber. Yet this detail alone demonstrates the effort the Grospelliers poured into this Victorian house, and the vision they shared for it.
From the outset the couple conceived Yann's at Glenearn House as a restaurant with rooms, where visitors could either come and dine, or dine and stay. The family, meanwhile, have a self-contained flat at the rear of the property. "Living and working in the one place was the only way we could make it work with the kids," says Shari. "We had so many ideas for what we could do with the place."
The couple even considered including a cookery school, but have been so busy since opening their doors in March that they haven't had a chance to explore this venture. With five spacious bedrooms, the house lends itself to having guests. "We've always enjoyed entertaining," Shari says. "We don't see this as a job; we like having people to the house."
This sense of enjoyment, combined with the sense that the Grospelliers are sharing their home, helps explain Yann's highly personalised style. Arriving in the guest sitting room – with its dramatic black-on-black printed wallpaper and combination of antique finds and new pieces – including the Chesterfield sofas Shari bought second-hand after spotting them in a local ad – it's as if you've turned up in someone's very comfortable living room. "If you invite friends round for dinner you wouldn't just sit down at the table straight away; you'd relax first and have a drink, and we do the same here," she says. "Some people even fall asleep on the sofa!"
Before Shari could get round to the finer aesthetics, however, there was the refurbishment and reconfiguration project to tackle. The house required some structural work, as various internal walls were removed to create the restaurant area and the kitchen. The entire project took just six weeks, and Shari credits the long hours put in by the team of Polish builders and tradesmen working with the Crieff-based Corryard Development, a company set up by friends of the couple.
It also helped that Yannick and Shari had tackled various renovations in the past. "We've never moved into a house and not knocked something down or changed it," Shari acknowledges. "Here, we got the keys on 25 January at 4:30pm. By 4:33pm Yannick had lifted a carpet; by 4:45pm we'd uncovered the living room fireplace." The couple hit the ground running.
There were some great finds along the way. The original fireplaces had been blocked over, while the period shutters still bear the graffiti from when Glenearn was a boarding house. "It was like finding treasure," Shari says. She describes the interior style as "a mixture of homeliness and opulence and junk, and it just blends together".
During the six months between buying the property and getting the keys, the couple trawled local sales rooms, auctions and junk yards – Shari's father even got involved by rescuing an old British Rail travel chest from a skip.
"We like that shabby-chic style," Shari says. The couple also brought some things from Chamonix. "It's so easy to shop there, as there's lots of rustic stuff that mixes with anything."
Other pieces, such as the wooden skis mounted on the wall in the hallway, were gifts – these from Yannick's father, having originally belonged to his grandfather.
Sometimes Shari just took a chance, as with the carved dresser in the dining room which, again, she spotted advertised in a paper. "It was varnished in this horrible dark brown, but it was solid oak underneath," she says. "I love the shapes of things, like barley twist legs on tables; anything that's curvy and a bit fancy."
The dark palette, as displayed in the toilets, was a bold choice. "It's sexy; it's what people maybe wouldn't do in their own homes," says Shari. She acknowledges that they were influenced by what they'd experienced elsewhere – or rather, what they hadn't experienced. "It was more about going to places and feeling disappointed, whereas here we wanted it to be a constant, where everything was done well," she says.
That proved challenging on a tight budget. There was no way they could afford original art, for example, so Shari sourced eye-catching posters and had them framed. The house will continue to evolve as she finds new pieces, while the couple also have plans to extend the house to the side, creating a garden room. "That's what doing a house is: trying a piece here, something else there," she reflects. "It's making a picture, a collage, and every day something changes." sm
• Yann's at Glenearn House, Perth Road, Crieff, tel: 01764 650111, or visit
www.yannsatglenearnhouse.comThe full article contains 1123 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
