An elegant Georgian house perfectly situated in the rolling Cotswold countryside

One of the most time-consuming tasks is trawling through showrooms and auction houses for antique side tables of the right height and size for clients' homes, she says. Vanessa does not feel that modern tables are right for traditional country houses, though she has plans for a modern chair and lamp in the drawing room. 'You can have a bit of modernity in the country,' she says. ‘But not too much.’

I ask about the many patterned fabrics in the room, which she has cleverly combined without making them overwhelming and, while Vanessa delights in pattern and admits she has used rather more here than she might for a client, her first priorities are more structural: getting the proportions right and space planning. Their predecessors had changed this room from kitchen to drawing room, and Vanessa replaced the fireplace that they had installed with a larger one from Jamb, remade the windows and designed a large bookcase, which takes up the whole of one wall. As you look around, all these details seem as though they have always been here - a tribute to her innate sense of proportion.

Seeing the many silver-framed photographs of Henry and his younger brother Rupert, eight, in here is a surprise. 'I know!' says Vanessa. 'Melissa was always saying, ''In England, we keep family photographs in the bedroom.'' But I'm Canadian/Venezuelan.' The daughter of a nuclear physicist and a lawyer, she revelled during her childhood in Vancouver in visiting open houses - the North American habit of throwing open houses for sale to anyone who cares to visit. 'I used to look carefully and, on the way home in the car, start to sketch out their house and redo the floor plan. Lord knows what my plans looked like.' She came to London in her early twenties to work for Sotheby's, after completing its one-year American Arts course in New York in the late Nineties and later, after training at KLC, switched to interior design, eventually working with Melissa.

Like Melissa, Vanessa's husband, who works for Sotheby's, is 'very English', she says, and he insisted on a casual sitting room where the boys can watch television and the whole family relaxes. The fabrics are plainer in here and the carpet has a modern pattern, jointly designed by Melissa and Robert Stephenson. In the kitchen and dining room, on the other side of the hall, a huge table designed by Vanessa is surrounded by simple, Gustavian-inspired chairs and the windows have curtains in 'Indhira' cotton by Le Manach. The calm colours of the painted walls throughout the house are a nod to its early Georgian roots and contribute to its serene atmosphere, with Farrow & Ball 'Old White' in here, 'French Gray' in the drawing room and 'Stony Ground' in the main bedroom.