The team at designer kitchen company deVOL are on tenterhooks to see how a fly-on-the-wall show about them goes down in the 海角视频 and US.
For the past few months cameras have been following its staff around as they work on some of the poshest homes in Britain.
The series, called For the Love of Kitchens, finally airs tonight on America’s Magnolia Network – launched by celebrity home makeover specialists Chip and Joanna Gaines – and will stream on Discovery+ over here.
The eight episodes centre on deVOL founder Paul O’Leary and creative director Helen Parker – who are a couple – and managing director Robin McLennan as they oversee the quintessentially English business, based out of historic Cotes Mill, on the banks of the River Soar, near Loughborough, in Leicestershire.
The £20 million turnover business, which Paul built from the ground up, has worked for the rich and famous on both sides of the Atlantic, and now has two showrooms in London’s trendy Clerkenwell and another in the fashionable No-Ho district in New York’s Manhattan.
Over the years the team has installed kitchens for celebrities including Zoe Ball and movie stars Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher.
Paul said it was hard work and at times terrifying having a TV crew follow them around, but was also great fun and he hopes the added exposure will pay off.
For the Love of Kitchens doesn’t just feature their kitchens, he said, but also deVOL products such as a new paint range, lighting, sinks, furniture and antiques.
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Paul said: “We also make inspirational visits in it, going to places we’ve always been interested in, and we talk about what we love and what inspires us.
“We also have a chance to meet interesting people who we’ve got to know on Instagram which was quite fun.
“The show doesn’t just show kitchens, but all the work we do designing new products.
“We’ve had to make sure all the products featured are going to be in stock and online, just in case.
“When they announced the show we got 1,000 brochure requests in a day, and it costs a lot of money to produce them and ship them out to the States. It’s a very, very thick book on very nice paper.
“People use them as a coffee table book and we actually have to sell the copies because it costs so much to print – it’s called the Book of Kitchens. The costs were getting silly – we were spending £40,000 printing them every two months. Air freighting 1,000 brochures to New York the New York showroom costs nearly £5,000.”
Paul said they had been lucky to have some control over how the series was filmed and edited and were really happy with the result.
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He said: “The Magnolia Network have been really, really good to deal with and they’ve been talking about a second and third series from the start, but my response was “let’s wait and see how it goes down”.
“There are lots of people at deVOL who are involved and they all have to be up for it too.
“I do think it’s pretty good and I’ve been watching some of their other shows, and even went back to watch an old episode of Changing Rooms.
“It’s a fascinating industry and it’s got my creative juices flowing and made me want to do more – exactly what that will be I have no idea.
“These chances do not come along very often and sometimes you have to jump in the deep end and hope for the best. It’s not something you have complete control over so you do have to have trust in people.”