Creating a child friendly space full of unique features

IT’S funny the things people notice when viewing a property; the things that make one stand out and feel like ‘the one’. For Neil Mulholland, it was a false door in the living room of this top floor flat at 39/5 West Nicolson Street in Edinburgh’s Newington.

The doorway appears to lead into the hallway, but doesn’t. Originally designed to enhance the symmetry of the room, it’s the kind of architectural quirk that you might expect to find in a period property – this flat dates from the 1820s – but in reality, few such quirks, particularly non-functioning ones, survive the test of time, especially perhaps in flats that, by their nature, change hands more frequently, and where every room has had several lives.

As Neil says: “That was it for me. We realised this flat still had all these period features.” The false door was only the beginning: the Victorian ‘Waverley’ range was still in place, and working, in the kitchen, and there were three fireplaces: two Victorian, in the living room and master bedroom, and an original Georgian fireplace in the second bedroom. Add to that the stripped timber flooring and panelled doors, still with their Georgian ironmongery, along with wooden shutters and wainscoting and plain cornice mouldings, and this flat was brimming with character.

It was also in a perfect location for Neil and his wife Jenny Hogarth, who now have a 14-month-old son Bo. Neil is a Professor of Contemporary Art and Director of the MFA at the University of Edinburgh, and has curated numerous exhibitions as well as writing regularly for the international art press. The university buildings are practically on the doorstep – you look out towards the recently built School of Informatics from the window seat in the kitchen.

Artist Jenny was just as keen to live in the thick of things. A graduate of the nearby Edinburgh College of Art as well as Glasgow School of Art, Jenny now works in collaboration with the London-based artist Kim Coleman, creating video and installation works, and was also one of the founders of the Edinburgh Embassy Gallery.

Six-and-a-half-years ago, when Neil and Jenny bought this, their first home together, number 39/5 ticked all the boxes. The downside? The interior was in a dismal state. The previous owner had let the two bedrooms, and the kitchen had doubled as a communal living room. “The kitchen had these horrible 1980s units,” Neil recalls. “It was pretty disgusting.”

The couple set about renovating the flat, space by space. “Neither of us had really thought about interiors much before having this flat, and we were inspired by the place itself,” Jenny says. Rather than embracing the major tasks first – like ripping out the kitchen – the couple took a more subtle approach. Neil points out the ebony door handles he sourced to replace the existing brass handles, and which have worn naturally over the years to adopt a lovely patina. “It’s a small detail,” he acknowledges, “but it’s one of the first things we did.”

Likewise, one of Jenny’s first tasks was painting the Georgian-style landscape mural in the hallway, which is lit by a skylight. This, along with the doors, which have been painted in a rich brown colour called Wainscot – “These doors would have been painted in this colour originally to look like mahogany,” Neil explains – sets the tone as you arrive. The pea green used on the walls in the master bedroom is another Georgian colour, as is the pinkish-stone hue used in the living room.

Unusually, the flat has a separate bathroom and toilet, and the couple refurbished both spaces soon after moving in. Jenny had a clear vision for what she wanted here, beginning with the crackle glazed Retro Metro green wall tiles from Fired Earth. An imported Japanese tub was chosen for the bathroom, with a shower over it, and its one metre square dimensions are a perfect fit here. In the adjacent toilet, the couple scoured Edinburgh’s architectural salvage yards for fittings, from the period towel rail and cast iron radiator to the small Belfast sink that takes the place of a more traditional bathroom basin, while their prize find was the cast iron ‘Dunedin’ high-level cistern.

The couple enjoy this process of granting aged pieces a new existence. This approach, Jenny says, “felt right for the flat, but also it becomes a bit of a hobby as something you enjoy doing at weekends”. Likewise, most of their furniture is secondhand, whether sourced from shops on Edinburgh’s Causewayside, such as the 1820s linen press in Bo’s bedroom, or further afield – the Welsh dresser in the kitchen came from London, for example. “We tend to get things before they’ve been worked on, before they’ve been stripped and waxed, as we prefer pieces that have that age about them,” says Neil.

The kitchen is perhaps a prime example of this ethos in action. Neil cleaned the working range by hand, as he did the fireplaces throughout, while the wooden cabinets, along with the window seat and the woodwork framing the window, were handmade using reclaimed antique pine salvaged from lecture theatre pews discarded by Edinburgh College of Art.

The couple complemented the aged timber with black granite worktops and a Belfast sink, and with rich red Moroccan tiles extending up the wall behind the units and polished plaster walls elsewhere. The antique table still bears the scratches and scars of decades of use before it arrived here – again, this wear and tear only adds to the patina of this space – while the slate floor tiles give a nod to traditional flagstones. “We love this kitchen,” Jenny says, and when friends visit, even though the living room is larger, everyone naturally gravitates here to sit around the table.”

Naturally enough the flat evolved with the arrival of Bo. Having initially used the back bedroom to sleep in, the couple moved to the larger bedroom at the front of the flat to create Bo’s nursery in the second bedroom. Jenny hand-painted the wallpaper here in a pattern of rainbow rain using shades by Farrow & Ball that are then repeated in blocks of colour for the doors, radiator, dado rail and working shutters. It’s a typically inventive touch.

And, as you might expect from the home of an artist and a professor of art, the walls throughout are lined with artworks, from the contemporary pieces produced by artists based in the UK, USA, Australia, France and Germany – many of whom have worked with Neil – to examples of Georgian, Victorian, Indian and Balinese art, creating, as Jenny says, “a smorgasbord of the art of the 21st century”.

It is all part of what makes Neil and Jenny’s home so fascinating to visit; each element here is personal and each piece, from the fittings to the furnishings, has a story just waiting to  be shared.

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