Interiors: Katie Johnston and Gordon Forrest were smitten at first sight with their Georgian house in East Lothian

Katie Johnston and Gordon Forrest, who live here with their son, Rudi, almost two, and their retired racing greyhound, Blue, certainly felt this way back in 2004 when they came to view the property. “I was in the door two minutes when I asked the owners, ‘Do you have somewhere else to go…?’” Katie recalls. The couple just knew this was it.

And little wonder. The B listed, semi-detached house dates back to 1810 and sits within an equally characterful walled garden, with a detached garage accessed from the garden and a shared lane to the side. The previous owners carried out significant refurbishment during their time here, but there was still plenty of scope for Katie and Gordon to stamp their own aesthetic onto the house and garden.

The couple were initially attracted by the location. Art teacher Katie had been living in Perth while Gordon had owned a property in Edinburgh’s Stockbridge Colonies. Being keen surfers, they wanted a house closer to the East Lothian coast. Gordon was still working in Edinburgh at the time so an easy commute was important (there’s a train link at Dunbar, just a few miles away) while the following year, in 2005, he launched his own business, Great Escape, on North Berwick’s High Street. Stenton was the ideal location. As Katie says: “Although it feels as if you’re in the middle of nowhere, you’re not.”

The couple worked their way through the interior. The original flagstones in the hall were refurbished and Gordon stripped back the stone staircase. The fireplace in the master bedroom was refurbished and simple coving added, while a Morsø woodburner was installed in the fireplace in the sitting room, complementing the original marble surround with its understated design. “We installed the stove only a few winters ago, and it’s the best thing we’ve done,” Gordon reflects, as the heat percolates into the wide hallway before rising to warm the upper level.

The house has a simple and logical layout, as you might expect from a Georgian property. The ground level sitting room extends the depth of the house, with the combined dining-living room and kitchen on the other side of the hall. This layout is repeated upstairs in the arrangement of the three bedrooms and family bathroom.

“We tend to spend most of our time in here,” Katie says of the dining-living room. “It’s amazing how people just gravitate towards this space.” The opening between this room and the adjoining kitchen is original, and can be closed off with tall timber-panelled doors. The oil-fired Rayburn range in the dining-living room (which was installed by the previous owners) also serves the central heating system, and while Katie and Gordon considered moving the kitchen into this larger space, alongside the range, they decided against it, preferring the functionality of having two separate but interconnected zones.

They cook on the Rayburn, but have all the other practical elements within the kitchen itself, which they re-fitted with timber panelled units and a Belfast sink. While fairly unusual, this arrangement works, and it also means they can close over those double doors of an evening while still enjoying the warmth from the range.

The couple were mindful of the building’s character as they made decisions. Original features include wooden floors, working shutters and timber dado panelling, and the house needed a sympathetic eye. Katie and Gordon’s choice of furniture and art fit as if they were meant to be. Katie originally studied interior design while Gordon studied fine art photography, so they share creativity of vision. Gordon subsequently worked with an antique dealer in Edinburgh where he learned how to repair and renovate furniture, and he loves to find something old and give it new life.

“Quite a lot of stuff here has come out of skips,” he says, including two vintage shop signs that now hang in the hallway and the dining-living room, while North Berwick’s charity shops are favourite haunts for smaller objects.

In the sitting room, Gordon points out an ornately-carved Chinese side table that was painted gold when he found (“I’d sit at night, picking out all the detail”) while he rebuilt an 18th-century Italian ‘six plank’ chest using old handmade nails for authenticity. A framed tribal Turkoman carpet that dates from the 1900s hangs framed on one wall.

The lofty stairwell is lit from a Velux rooflight high above and is lined in framed vintage posters from the 1920s, Thirties and Forties – copies of the originals that the couple picked up on snowboarding and ski trips to Europe - while the giant canvas on the landing, and a second piece in the master bedroom, were unearthed from a skip in Edinburgh some 20 years ago, having been stripped out of a church undergoing refurbishment. Vintage leather saddlebags hang over the balustrade, while Gordon spotted the headless statue of Sir Walter Scott discarded on the street in Edinburgh; it now stands on the stairs.

By contrast, the clear polycarbonate wall lights on the staircase are contemporary, but even here there’s a clever detail: lit, they cast a silhouette of a traditional chandelier on the wall behind.

While Gordon takes credit for the proliferation of reworked and refurbished furniture, Katie has added more contemporary touches, like the Designers Guild wallpaper in the bathroom, and the resulting aesthetic is refreshingly cliché free. The patina of the house itself is reflected in the pieces.

The garden, meanwhile, has been a labour of love and been designed, in a sense, as a series of outdoor ‘rooms’. “There was a lot of nice planting here, but it had gone super wild,” Gordon explains. The main garden lies to the south and includes a summer house, while the walled area alongside this is surrounded by fruit trees and was previously a vegetable garden until Gordon built the pond. Having embraced the project with little experience, the couple gleaned advice and inspiration wherever they could, from Monty Don on television to the open gardens in Scotland’s Gardens Scheme. This garden, as a result, is an absolute gem and a hugely appealing feature.

So, what next? With such an eclectic collection of furniture, objects and artworks, Katie and Gordon can imagine themselves in another period house, although they dream of building a very modern home. “When I was studying I did a project to design a holiday house, and I still have that vision in my head,” Katie says. Maybe one day. Clearly, a new challenge holds no fear for this creative couple.

• Offers over £435,000; contact Simpson & Marwick (01620 892 000, www.eastlothianprimeproperty.com