The blind date that led to love
Buying an old house without viewing is rash but sometimes it works perfectly says
LISA and Neil McMyn were leaping in at the deep end when they bought this handsome Victorian house located at 25 Broomieknowe in Lasswade in 2007. The couple had been living in Sydney, and they offered on this property while in Australia, having only seen photos. When they eventually viewed Wester Riggs a month later, the McMyns realised it needed more work than anticipated.
Fortunately by that stage they were already emotionally engaged. “Even from outside, we loved it” Lisa recalls. From the fabric of the building to the rich internal detailing, the house had fantastic bones, but the interior required a cosmetic overhaul to suit the couple’s contemporary taste, as well as some fundamental upgrading. “Everything was stripped back to the plaster and we installed a new heating system and rewired and re-plumbed” Lisa says.
The house also required some reconfiguration to make it work for the lifestyle of a young family as the couple have two daughters, Tess, nine, and Marni, seven. Lisa was influenced by her time living in Australia when considering the redesign. “Designers in Australia tend to take a more holistic approach to a property,” she says. “With everything I chose, from the radiators and light switches to the door handles and the colour palette, I wanted the spaces to hang together as one big house but with points of interest.”
The couple lived in the house as it was for the first six months while Lisa worked through ideas. “I kept a scrap book of pages and ideas torn from magazines, and then tried to link the colour themes through between the spaces,” she says. “Maybe it was the lines of a kitchen or the style of a staircase; it gave me a structure to work with.”
Lisa’s eye for great design extends beyond interiors: she is one half of the jewellery company I Love a Lassie, which she launched with jewellery designer Arlene Katorza.
Here, Lisa enhanced the sense of flow in the house by limiting the palette. She chose two carpet colours throughout – pale stone and rich grey-toned brown – with a stripy Roger Oates stair runner that looks dramatic against the inky black staircase, and she used the same warm putty paint colour for every room. Downstairs, black painted floorboards in the hallway and drawing room and dark slate floor tiles in the dining-kitchen maintain this rich palette. As Lisa says: “I felt it was important to get the basics right so there’s a sense of continuity.”
Getting the layout right was also crucial. On the first floor, the original configuration of bathroom, shower room and single bedroom was rearranged to create an en-suite dressing room and bathroom for the master bedroom, along with a family bathroom. “This was my chance to do a phenomenal bathroom,” she says, and this is, from the freestanding Imperial bath to the glamorous damask-style Porcelanosa tiling.
Today’s open plan dining-kitchen was previously two spaces, and although Lisa toyed with keeping the existing Aga, it didn’t fit with her overall concept. Instead she chose a contemporary Hacker kitchen in tobacco oak veneer, paired with a chunky Silestone worktop on the overscaled island, with Flos pendant lights and slate floor tiling from Fired Earth.
Although Lisa had initially intended to strip out the storage space between the drawing room and the diningkitchen, as she says: “Living here in those early months, I realised how handy it was having the butler’s pantry and the laundry. Living in a big house, which I hadn’t been used to, you need these storage spaces.” She redesigned this area to make it function better, with integrated toy storage. There’s now a great flow between the dining-kitchen, drawing room, conservatory and garden. As Lisa says: “This whole side of the house has become the family zone.”
The other side of the hallway has the drawing room and Lisa’s study. The drawing and sitting rooms are polar opposites: while the drawing room is light and airy, with relaxed sofas that Lisa designed and had made, the sitting room is a dramatic entertaining space with a fabulous chandelier and black velvet wing chairs and sofa, and with walls painted in Chemise by Farrow & Ball. As Lisa says: “When I was making my scrapbook, these were the styles I kept coming back to.”
Remarkably considering the scale of the renovation and redesign, all the major work was completed in just 12 weeks. Lisa worked throughout the process with Paul Rogers of Gloss, who was project manager. As Lisa says: “Paul was great at sourcing product. He really helped in terms of the affordability of the overall project.”
The family are only moving now to gain some land and will take on another project. For Lisa, the highlight of her home has been the functionality she has designed into these spaces, but Wester Riggs is also packed with style.