Location, location, location

Gone over budget doing up your space and now haven't a sou to spend on that iconic light for the bedroom? One way you can recoup the expense is to hire it out as a location for photo shoots, commercials or films. Location scouts are always on the lookout for the right setting to launch a unisex perfume, shoot a girl band's new video or provide the setting for a simple story about, say, a bookshop owner living in Notting Hill who falls in love with a film star. And with fees ranging from around £500 to £2,000 per day, a few stints in front of the camera could easily pay for that underpinning work and leave plenty for the poured rubber floor you've always wanted.

For Alastair Hendy, food writer and stylist, whose industrial-style apartment has featured in fashion, food and interior photographic shoots, the financial benefits far outweigh the inconvenience of having strangers fussing about in his kitchen. His best booking to date was a five-day advertising shoot for Habitat, during which Hendy and his partner moved into a hotel, while their furniture was packed in bubble-wrap and put into safe storage. 'The fees paid for finishing this space,' explains Hendy. Since then he has installed made-to-measure aluminium curtain tracking along a wall of industrial-sized windows and in a curve around the new dining table, in order to separate working and living areas.

Hendy's apartment is in a former print factory in the East End. When the building was divided into potential loft-style live/work units five years ago, Hendy and his partner, John Clinch, bought a corner unit on the ground floor and basement. As well as lacking any connection between the two levels, there were rough, concrete floors and bare brick walls, large windows on the upper level, inadequate light in the basement and no basic utilities. Hendy took control of designing and managing the conversion - something of a tall order without the expertise of an architect and no previous experience of a similar project.

Hendy's passion for food always meant the position of the kitchen area would be pivotal to the final layout of the apartment, with all the other areas radiating out from its central basement location. Cutting out part of the upper floor to provide access to the lower level has created a sense of light and space throughout the apartment.

His use of industrial materials is as inspirational as it is resourceful - a plain pine worktop is hammer-wrapped in a sheet of stainless steel, and inexpensive concrete paving slabs make durable and stylish flooring. All the stainless-steel fixtures and fittings in the kitchen and bathroom are either custom-made or salvaged from scrap merchants in Brick Lane. Most of the furniture comes from dealers in 20th-century design classics, or local junk shops and street markets.

Hendy's skill lies in his ability to bring together basic materials, iconic design pieces, diverse elements from his neighbourhood and finds from trips abroad to create an uncompromisingly contemporary yet personal living space.

He insists, however, that there is a 'right-time, right-place' element to the success of his apartment. 'I didn't set out to create a home I could benefit from financially. This space is still a projection of who I am,' he says. 'It's great if people want to hire this space, but I'm aware it may not last forever.

'As a home and work space, it's bound to evolve,' he adds. 'I don't want to move away from one-space living and put up walls. Having said that, the space already looks and feels very different to when we first moved in. The curtains have changed the mood of the space and there are more cushions. Everything has become softer and plusher. I think that is the way things are moving.'

So, soft and plush, eh? Coming to a catalogue/ magazine/screen near you soon.