Some houses are like the Tardis – you need to get all the way inside them to appreciate their charms (and I can tell you from personal experience, that Giorgio Armani’s palazzo in Milan looks like a garage from the street…).

Others reveal their full fabulousness the moment you are over the boundary – Chandler’s Reach is one of these.

The back view, visible from the road in Rye, is of a cluster of weather boarded buildings painted a uniform matt black. It looks chic enough, but the minute you get through the gate and take in the setting, the only possible reaction is: wow!

The house, within a compound of a garage/studio, guest cabin and separate office building, backs right onto the River Rother and uninterrupted views across the salt marshes, with their lush green grass and thickets of vegetation. To the east, the river curves round to the left in an arrangement Capability Brown would have approved as a natural effect so pleasing to the eye.

Adding the kind of visual punctuation Mr Brown achieved via carefully sited oak trees, just around the river bend is the railway bridge with its pleasingly antique industrial iron frame structure – and sitting on top of it all the characteristic big sky of this marsh and marine landscape.

“You can walk all the way to Camber Sands from here,” says John Carver, looking out across the view with fond familiarity, “crossing only one road.”

Yet, it was the less outstanding rear view which first caught the attention of John and Anna to the property.

“I drive around and notice things,” says John. “I’d seen this place, it was on my radar, but we decided not to look for anywhere to buy until our previous house was under offer, or you’re wasting people’s time. Just after we found the perfect buyers, Chandler’s Reach came up. It went on the market on the Thursday and we bought it on the Friday.”

But it’s not surprising they could immediately see the potential of this house – the one they left for it started out as a ‘knackered old bungalow’ and by the time they’d worked their magic on it, was featured in several interiors magazines and was in demand as a location for film and photo shoots.

“We bought it in 2007 as a weekender,” explains John, “when we were still living in London. We thought we’d just tart it up, but then we went a bit bonkers and put in extensions and a swimming pool, so then we loved it so much we thought, can we live here? At first we kept our place in Primrose Hill, spending weekends up there, but once Fin, our elder son, was in school down here, we decided to move full time.”

So why did they move on from such a paradise?

“It was in the middle of nowhere with no fast internet and now Fin’s a teenager it’s great to be somewhere he can walk everywhere from, so we don’t have to drive, schlepping up and down lanes in the car. In Rye he can walk to the station, the cinema and the tennis club is next door – although, of course, the river frontage was the thing…”

One glance round the garden shows how they’ve made the most of it. There are two timber decks, both with tables and chairs to eat out on. The one by the main house has two sets of glass doors leading out to it from the sitting room and dining area and is shaded by a pergola with a mature vine – already in place when they moved in – over a large L-shaped outdoor sofa.

The deck outside the guest cabin – the fourth building along in the set of four, which they built from scratch – has an outdoor ping pong table and an adjacent fire bowl, surrounded by tree trunk stools. For even closer river watching, there’s a large jetty at high tide level (the Rother is a tidal river), although no boat.

“I try not to have things which break,” says John, in what sounds like the wise voice of experience. “But we have mates with speed boats, so we go out with them.”

If, with all these mentions of speed boats, ping pong, tree trunks and fire bowls, Chandler’s Reach sounds like a bit of a boy zone – you are not far off it. The interiors of all four buildings continue the theme of man-toys, with decorative features including vintage water skis, wooden canoes, framed posters for Steve McQueen movies and original art work for Ozzy Osbourne album covers.

But while rugged pursuits and icons of hip masculinity feature throughout, it’s not a case of John making all the decorative decisions, rather a shared taste for that ultra cool aesthetic.

“It’s all collaborative,” says John. “Anna and I do it all together.”

Which is not surprising for a couple from a background of multiple creative disciplines. Anna’s company Cunning specialises in highly imaginative ‘disruptive’ marketing initiatives (she was responsible for Gail Porter being projected on to the House of Commons, for FHM magazine in 1999, which caused quite a stir…) and John has applied his film making and photography skills as the Creative Director of an Ad agency, as well as to fine art projects. He has recently directed the world’s first ‘Selfie’ movie, a psychological thriller called Starvecrow.

“John and I are both into the whole process of interior design,” says Anna. “Sometimes it’s a compromise, but it all works out.”

An example of this is found in the walls of decorative tiles on either side of the bed in the cabin.

“They’re from Emery et Cie in Belgium,” says Anna. “I went over to one of their monthly warehouse sales, saw that they had them already made up as panels and thought they’re great and they’re the perfect size… John didn’t like them at first, he would have chosen the white Metro tiles we have in the bathrooms, but now he loves them.”

The beautifully planted raised beds framing the garden are also by Anna – “I don’t know anything about gardening,” says John – and reflect their shared aesthetic, sided with the recycled planks which are such a feature of the whole property.

“The house was already weather boarded,” says John. “But we clad it on the inside as well, using boards from the old deck, which we replaced and we put in a new kitchen with large drawers – instead of cupboards – fronted with American barn oak.”

If it seems a long way to bring reclaimed wood, there were practical as well as style reasons for the choice.

“I couldn’t find anything that I really loved the patina of,” says Anna, “which had also been properly seasoned, so it wasn’t going to bend the moment there was some moisture in the air, which you are inevitably going to get in a kitchen.”

The wood has been used to brilliant effect as facings on an off-the-peg kitchen, so it has a hand-built, rustic look, but with what Anna called ‘swishy in and out drawers’.

The choice of large drawers, rather than cupboards was inspired by a stay in a holiday rental which had them.

“It was so efficient,” says Anna. “I could never go back to doors now. With a drawer you can easily get to the back, because it comes right out and then you’re on top of the drawer to take things out, rather than having to reach in and grope about.”

Functionality of this kind was her inspiration for the kitchen plan.

“I designed the kitchen for ease of use,” says Anna. “You can empty the dishwasher in about one third of the normal time because the drawers for all the plates are right next to it.”

Feature wood, as used to such effect here – and in the brilliant storage from old apple crates in the laundry – is a theme throughout the property.

“The layout of the house is the same as when we bought it, but it’s re-purposed, recommissioned and reinvented,” says John. “It’s made it hygge, cosy – our previous house was more sleek. We use all the rooms here, whereas in that house we had rooms we didn’t go in.”

Wood cladding is also used to great effect in the main room of the guest cabin and in another ground floor bedroom. John admits he gets a bit obsessed with the detail of it.

“I’m mad for cladding,” he says, laughing. “The boards are cheap, but the cost comes in with how you do it. The nails are all beautifully crafted and carefully positioned, it’s all in the detail. Once it’s all up the steel nail heads gleam, which takes it all on to a higher plane. I get obsessed. The floor nails are hand made by a blacksmith…”

Detail is clearly important to him. All the cupboards and drawers in the main house – kitchen and bedroom – have the same sleek steel handles.

“They’re original 1980s Philippe Starck,” he says. “I take them with me from house to house.”

He pauses, then adds: “I changed every light switch here too…”

But while John may be a stickler for small details, the wilder side of both halves of this creative couple comes out in their choice of artworks, with large scale original paintings – and some quirky eBay finds – in every room, mixed in with some very special photographs.

There’s a portrait of actor David Hemmings in his role in iconic 1960s film Blow Up taken by Terry O’Neil and the family group shots in the downstairs loo are by Rankin, an old friend.

Most impressively, on the upstairs landing is the artwork for the cover of Ozzy Osbourne’s album No Rest for the Wicked, for which John was Creative Director, shot by Bob Carlos Clark.

In the guest cabin is another display of John’s art work in a group of six of the very striking images he creates in collaboration with artist Luke Hannam. John takes the pictures – black and whites of shipping containers in Dungeness and the like – then Luke paints over the top.

With his Creative Director’s eye for the final element which will bring it all together, John then adds carefully positioned pieces of masking tape and the result is an artistic sum larger than the whole of the parts.

In another collaboration, John and Anna are bringing their collective skills together in a new project called Cache, a bespoke Personal Curation service creating ‘legacy’ for individuals and companies.

They use a mix of media for curated story telling – which might consist of Super 8 films, video or even old slides being edited into a short film, a specially commissioned photo shoot, or existing pictures being made into a superb book, family histories told, or an adventure captured. For one client they created a secure website documenting his classic car collection.

John shows me the book they’ve created documenting the journey of their previous house from bungalow to dream home, interspersed with gorgeous shots of family and pets. It’s a superb tome bound in heavy leather, with exquisitely printed photographs on heavy paper, which he then returns to its wooden box, carefully wrapped in felt.

It’s a unique piece, deeply personal to them and their family – and featuring reassuring wood and quality materials combined with the utmost style. Very much like their lovely home.