TEN YEARS AGO, WHEN LEE and Clark Christie decided they needed a little more space, the couple had a pretty firm ideal in mind.
House-hunting in Kirkcaldy, they wanted a property with generous proportions and period features intact. The town centre flat the couple were living in at the time had been devoid of original features when they moved in, and they'd subsequently reinstated Victorian detailing that would suit the age of the property. This time round however, they wanted a house with its Victorian bones already there.
It isn't hard to appreciate why the Christies were so taken by this three-bedroom ground floor property on Loughborough Road – the dramatic cornicing in the living room features the heads of roaring lions, which isn't the kind of period feature you happen across every day.
Number 67 looks like a semi-detached house but the split is horizontal, thus creating upper and lower apartments. The property dates from 1880, when it was built for a Captain Dawson, and he apparently sold off the lower floor to finance completion of the upper level.
The Christies had looked at a similar property elsewhere in Kirkcaldy but it was in a run-down state, whereas this place was in move-in condition, albeit looking somewhat dated. "The kitchen was the worst space, as the walls were cream while the units were white – only we didn't realise that until we cleaned them, they were that dirty," Lee recalls.
"Basically, everything was very beige, but we felt the spaces could look much grander because of the scale of the rooms. A house like this can take a blast of colour."
Indeed, Lee and Clark, who run wine delivery company The Wine Merchant as well as a number of post offices in the Fife area, started the transformation with some straightforward redecoration. They started by painting the living room a Victorian red hue. The master bedroom was then transformed after the mirrored wardrobes along an entire wall were removed. "Because we were able to live in the house as it was, we knew it would be a longterm project," says Lee. The kitchen and bathroom in particular weren't going to happen overnight.
"We stretched ourselves getting this property so we took our time not just saving up, but deciding what we wanted to do with these spaces, and finding the right pieces. We wanted this to be a comfortable, modern home, but with traditional features, so we were trying to be sympathetic to that idea rather than turning it into a contemporary home," Lee says.
The kitchen and bathroom illustrate this ethos perfectly. In the former, Lee and Clark took inspiration from the traditional, hand-crafted designs by Clive Christian when designing this space themselves. Lee sourced the various elements, from the Belling range cooker to the Iroko worktops, and had a local joinery firm fit it all together, including the handmade surround for the range. Having chosen the slate-effect Karndean flooring for its look and hardwearing quality, they reflected this finish with the slate mosaic tiling that clads the insert for the range. "We didn't want to introduce too many different textures," Lee explains.
Likewise, the existing pine ceiling, which they transformed with a lick of paint, is echoed in the tongue-and-groove panelling that forms the splashback – detailing that fits in well with the property's age.
Throughout the process the couple, who have two sons, Cormac, seven, and Logan, five, were balancing aesthetics with practicality, and they employed the same approach when sourcing the furnishings. Finding the right kitchen table took time, for example, as they wanted a piece that could be distressed yet still look good. "We didn't want something that we'd need to be precious about," says Lee, who was delighted eventually to find a Pottery Barn table in TK Maxx.
The couple also rejigged the spaces leading off the kitchen. There was originally a washhouse and coalhouse at the rear, and the previous owners had made this into a study with an inner vestibule leading between this space and the kitchen. Lee and Christie opened the area up, creating a family room instead, and extended the kitchen window to create French doors opening onto a patio. "It's changed the way we use both the house and the back garden," Lee says. "Now, when it's a bit nippy outside you can come into the family room and warm up, but it still feels like you're in the garden."
In the bathroom, meanwhile, the couple installed a freestanding Victorian-style bath, having had one in their last flat, while the original Victorian basin was salvaged from another property that Lee's uncle was doing some work on. Clark had a crash course in tiling when the tiler didn't turn up to lay the mosaic floor – the plumber was arriving the next day to fit the bath, so time was tight. Headache though this must have been, the high gloss mosaics are a nice counterbalance to the tongue-and-groove panelling, giving the otherwise traditional space a contemporary edge.
Clark also turned his hand to wallpapering the living room when they decided to spruce up the space last year. "It's such a thick paper, it's almost like fabric," Lee says of the brown-black hue, which adds depth alongside the cream walls. The slate fire surround is original, and the couple had intended to retain the existing floorboards, but they were too badly damaged. Instead, a cherry-hued laminate floor picks up the warm tones from the wallpaper and the deep red of the Chesterfield sofas.
The latter were a great purchase from years ago. "The older and more battered they get, the better they look," says Lee.
The candelabra required another lengthy search, as the ceiling rose couldn't take much weight. "If you put a small chandelier in here it would look ridiculous, but I couldn't find anything that was the right scale yet light enough," Lee says. After two years of searching she happened across the perfect piece in Ikea.
The couple now plan to start all over again with another property. "We've been so lucky here with all this period detailing," Lee says, and it's clear that she has relished the process of sourcing everything, from the cast iron fireplace in their bedroom, which came from Easy Architectural Salvage – "It's right for the age of the property" – to the vintage Bakelite phone in the living room. "We like our home comforts," Lee says, "but if we can get those in a traditional style, that's the way we tend to go." sm
67 Loughborough Road is for sale at offers over £215,000. Contact Slater Hogg & Howison, tel: 01592 206000 or visit www.slaterhogg.co.uk
The full article contains 1137 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
