Russian tycoon Mikhail Watford selling £18m mansion in Surrey

Misha’s weakness for “top, top quality” comes from building superyachts where everything has to be constructed using the finest materials. Now he’s not in the oil and gas business any more — he runs the ultra-prime property development company High Life — he has sold his gigayacht and given up the private jet, but the memory lingers. “I can’t help it,” he says. “If something isn’t completely perfect, it has to go.”

This drive for perfection started young. Born Mikhail Tolstosheya (he has since anglicised his name) in what is now Ukraine in 1955, he has a communist background, although his childhood was relatively extravagant. “We had a big four-bedroom apartment with a bath, and a car — which, in terms of luxury, was the equivalent of travelling by jet now.” His mum lives in Ascot, enjoying the fresh air and beautiful views while keeping her Soviet ID in the safe. “She strongly believes communists will be back to Russia and Ukraine,” Misha says. “Meanwhile, she’s enjoying modest spending of her capitalist son’s money... And we are praying her dream never comes true.”

The 9,640 sq ft of flawless craftsmanship known as Robinswood begins at the wrought-iron gates, made by the company that supplied Kensington Palace. The cobbled driveway is based on the circular stone piazzas outside King’s College, Cambridge. “We had four contractors here and no one could reproduce it exactly. Each time, we had to start again.” Finally, eight Neapolitans came from Italy and completed it in six weeks, at a cost of £56,000.

It seems an awful lot of faff and expense for a driveway. Would most people be able to tell the difference? Misha shakes his head mournfully. “It’s true — 80% of people, they don’t understand. This house is not for them. There’s no point in paying this sort of money if you don’t understand quality.”

Inside, through a grand columned entrance and a 10cm-thick solid oak door, the temperature is kept at a balmy 27C. The floor in the hall, crafted from polished rare cappuccino marble, is toasty underfoot — with floors this fine, even rich people take their shoes off. The effect is like a river of warm coffee heading for you.

Jane first saw it on a little side table at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, in Milan. It took her six months to convince Misha to order it, because no one had ever used it in these quantities before. “I came home and said, ‘Misha, I have to have the cappuccino. Wealthy people, they love name popping. ‘We have this marble, we have that marble...’ You have to have the best.”

The walls throughout Robinswood are finished with travertine marble dust, a technique that costs upwards of £100 a sq metre (although Misha managed to bag a company discount). Below, there are no dust-gathering skirting boards or unsightly joins. Instead, doorways are ingeniously framed by symmetrical shadow gaps that make the walls look as if they’re floating above the dark parquet (a rare wenge from Mozambique).

Misha and Jane Watford built Robinswood (Vicki Couchman)

Jane, 34, loves the luxury Italian furniture designer Promemoria, highly prized by high-net-worth individuals, and the house is filled with its wares. Everything is custom built, from the silk velvet sofa and chairs in the living room to the leather desk and bespoke sideboards. Cupboards and drawers are lined with silky leather “from sheep, not cows”, each in a different pastel hue.

I imagine Jane getting carried away with the Promemoria catalogue the way the rest of us might go a bit mad at Ikea, but without the instant gratification. “The pieces take 18 months to make by hand, so for us, this is the best,” she says. Does Misha ever say no? “We debate... then I buy it.”

“If she’d wanted a golden toilet, I’d probably have complained,” Misha insists. But the budget for Robinswood, he finally acknowledges with difficulty, going slightly pink, was “open-ended”.

It shows in the detail. Drawers glide soundlessly and curtains and blinds can be operated from a single button anywhere in the house via a motor system used on naval submarines. Tiny fibreoptic lights in the ceiling illuminate the original Warhol screen prints in the sitting room, and pick out bowls of flowers on the dining-room table and great vases of lilies and hydrangeas at the foot of the sweeping staircase.

Upstairs, there are four VIP bedrooms. Jane and Misha each have a luxurious ensuite lined with book-matched rare Carrara marble, as well as an adjoining dressing room. The wardrobes in Jane’s are clad in floor-to-ceiling hand-crafted mother-of-pearl (the doors alone cost £25,000) and there’s a tiny table made from “precious rare weeping birch, inlaid with horn”. “So, when you’re dressing, you can have your little coffee just so, and look out on the beautiful balcony and garden,” she says. One can only imagine. The entire house smells of spring flowers and scented (Tom Dixon) candles.

The Watfords have three children: Michael, Misha’s son by his first marriage, is 23; their daughter, Michelle, is 11; then there’s 2½-year-old Alexander. Would you let Michelle put posters on the walls, I ask. “No, she has her iPad.” Pictures, then? Jane looks horrified. I have no idea where the children of the super-rich keep their stuff. “That’s what boarding school is for,” Misha says, and I don’t think he’s joking.

I can’t see finger painting going on in this house, or nursery drawings stuck on the fridge. And this, it turns out, is why they are selling up. “I love everything about this house,” Jane sighs. “But we have this high-energy boy now, and I want him to go to the London prep school Michelle went to.” So, with a heavy heart, it’s back to Eaton Square to thoroughly refurb something old. “We could never live in a house someone else has lived in,” Jane shudders. “The toilets have to be changed, the showers...”

“There’s some kind of aura left by other people, and it affects us,” Misha says. “It’s difficult for us to find what we like, so we must create it.”

The kitchen is black Bulthaup, with Gaggenau appliances

Perhaps the biggest surprise in this house is the open-plan kitchen — sheer black Bulthaup, with Gaggenau appliances. “This is the way we like to live,” Misha says, sitting on a bar stool and digging into a gluten-free cupcake, swished down with champagne. “We have staff, but of course we cook,” Jane adds. “I like to follow my daughter’s diet [gluten-, dairy- and sugar-free]. Staff only cook when we host a dinner party.”

Robinswood has a sauna, a steam room and a swimming pool. Misha’s pride and joy, the wine cellar, filled with 2,227 bottles of the finest vintages, is based on the one at Harrods and sits behind wall-to-wall glass, like a vast Damien Hirst installation. He plans to drink the “best of the best” — a 1969 Richebourg Grand Cru, which costs £13,200 a case — on his 60th birthday later this year.

“But actually, this is better than Harrods,” he says, eyes shining. “A friend of mine checked the company records, and he said, ‘Misha, you are the first one to have a wine cellar completely made of wenge.’” Standing amid the magnums of 1985 Krug, I can almost understand the exquisite peace of mind that comes from owning a unique wine cellar entirely made of wenge.

Misha expects the house to be bought by an equally wealthy nondom who will understand and appreciate its incomparable opulence. So is £18m a lot, even for a nondom? “It’s not so much,” he says with heartwarming honesty. “The wealth is always big enough to absorb it.”

Robinswood is for sale with Beauchamp Estates (020 7499 7722, beauchamp. co.uk) and Knight Frank (020 7861 1552, knightfrank.co.uk)