Heads turn as Melanie Calland passes. With her curls set, circle skirt swishing, cats’-eye specs and, stretching ahead on their leads, five coiffured poodles, it’s fair to say she stands out from the crowd in the former colliery village in the Wear Valley.
Her home, too, stands apart from its neighbours. Melanie and husband Frankie’s front door opens onto a scene of mid-century domesticity with a classic, red-vinyl, three-piece suite and mirrored cocktail cabinet, 50s diner furniture – even a bamboo tiki bar, complete with palm tree.
When they first saw the house, though, the appeal was its plainness. “We’d been helping other people gut and revamp their houses,” says Melanie, “and we just couldn’t face it any more, so it was really nice to find somewhere we could just…
