Meet Darryl North: From coal mining in Doncaster to gold-leafing ceilings in Marbella

Darryl North (left) and colleague, Vitaly Smorodinov

Darryl North is a master craftsman who has spent the majority of his career making exquisite creations, first in the kitchen… and then within his clients’ homes.

But although he has always worked with his hands, his first job – straight from school as a coal miner – didn’t need such a meticulous touch.

After ten years, the coal mine shut in 1992 and Darryl was given the opportunity to choose a career to retrain into. He chose to retrain as a chef, and went from working down a Doncaster coal mine to working as a chef at some of London’s top dining establishments, such as the Hilton and the Bluebird.

So what then took him from being a top London chef to hanging €2,000 rolls of wallpaper in Marbella? Find out in our interview with Darryl North from Perfection Painters…

What brought you to the Costa del Sol?

I had been working pretty full-on advancing my career as a chef in London. I had worked five years at the Hilton Hotel, before moving to the Kensington Hilton and then got the opportunity to work under MasterChef’s John Torode at the Bluebird Chelsea. During this time I was asked to come out to Marbella as head chef at the MC Café in the Marbella Club Hotel. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse – coming to live in Marbella and helping to launch a restaurant in the prestigious Marbella Club Hotel.

During this amazing time, I also taught at Les Roches International School of Hotel Management, but I was definitely a better chef than teacher!

So from head chef to painter and decorator, how did that happen?

Being a chef means long hours, late nights, sweat and a lot of sacrifice. I had just got married and was hardly spending any time at home and one day I just came to the decision that I wanted to take a step back and enjoy my life in Marbella with my family.

I had a friend who had trained as a painter with Dulux in Spain, at their centre in Fuengirola, which unfortunately is no longer there, and I decided to follow the same route.  To me, painting and decorating was another way of expressing my creativity and gave me the opportunity to work with my hands again, but now instead of creating the pièce de résistance in the kitchen, I create it in my clients’ homes.

I work here in Spain, as well as back in the UK and in Bordeaux, France, where I also have an established clientele.

Tell us about the different types of materials and styles you work with

Well, I work with really diverse materials and am asked to carry out some amazing and unusual effects for clients. I have gold-leafed ceilings, silver-leafed walls, hung €2,000 rolls of silk wallpaper and we also get a lot of requests for furniture decoration and special effects, giving a new piece a more distressed look, stripping it back to the original, so to speak.  It’s all really labour intensive work and you have to be so painstaking with every detail, but the end results are worth it. I have a team of specialists who can put their hand to most types of interior or exterior decoration.

Darryl (right) and Vitaly on the job, choosing materials...

And so what’s the latest trend you get asked for?

We are doing lots of special effect decoration and like I said, stripping and decorating of furniture is very popular. Wallpaper is back in fashion; we work a lot with Farrow and Ball paints and wallpapers, which are really beautiful.

Plus we are getting lots of requests for French polishing and high gloss finishes for doors and kitchens. This gives you the look of a brand new kitchen, without the cost.

And when you’re not hanging wallpaper what’s your favourite destination in Andalucía?

Definitely the Sierra Nevada, I love skiing and I love the fact it’s so close I can be skiing in the morning and enjoying a Mojito on the beach in the afternoon! I also like walking in the local countryside around the village of Riofrío in Granada.  The surrounding area is ideal for walking or biking and, as its name suggests, there is a ‘Cold River’, where they have been trout fishing for over three hundred years.

Favourite beach to chill out on and enjoy that Mojito?

Definitely Cabopino beach to chill out, and Andy’s Beach Bar for the Mojito or El Ranchón Cubano, which is a couple of kilometres down towards Marbella, at Playa Real de Zaragoza.

And your favourite Sunday lunch venue?

Knuts Gastrobar in San Pedro de Alcántara. It serves great tapas with a twist and the presentation of every dish is superb. Something I really appreciate.

How would you compare your life in Marbella to the UK?

It’s less stressful definitely, but I do always go home to buy materials for each project; the quality and choice is much better. I still work back in the UK, so I really have the best of both worlds, moving between two places that feel most like home!

Darryl North is owner of Perfection Painters, a VIVA Recommended Partner. Contact Darryl for interior and exterior painting projects, special effects work and furniture decoration. English, Spanish and Russian spoken.

Tel: +34 634 337 030 or +44 780 195 3909 for jobs in the UK or France. Web:  www.perfectionpaintersspain.com