home truths
THE PROPERTY Late Victorian terrace LOCATION Edinburgh ROOMS Sitting room, kitchen-diner, utility room, four bedrooms, bathroom PURCHASED 2017 PREVIOUS PROPERTY ‘We lived in a two-bedroom flat before moving here,’ says Siobhan.
Location was the number one factor when Siobhan and Rory Mcfadden, along with their one-year-old daughter, upsized to a bigger family home in Edinburgh. ‘We’d relocated from Ireland to Edinburgh six years before for work and had lived in our two-bedroom apartment on the west side of the city ever since,’ says Siobhan, a colour consultant for Farrow & Ball. ‘Rory travels a lot for work and had a quick, direct link to the airport. The area also had good schools, shops and cafes
– all within walking distance. It was the perfect spot for us!’
When Una was born in the summer of 2016, the family were keen to find a home with more space, in the same area. However, the only way the couple could afford to stay locally was to find a renovation project that they could tackle over time themselves.
‘We came across this house, which fitted our remit perfectly,’ says Siobhan. ‘We fell in love with its quirks the minute we stepped inside. It was a characterful Victorian terrace but hadn’t been touched for decades and was so run down that no one else had shown any interest.’
Rewarding experience
The couple decided that they could meet the challenge and moved in a few months later. The kitchen was the first room they tackled. ‘With an old tin sink and virtually no cupboard space or appliances, it was unusable,’ recalls Siobhan. ‘The adjacent dining room was small and both rooms were north facing, so they felt cold and dark. We knocked down the dividing wall, creating a big open-plan kitchen-diner that gave us a blank canvas and, working alongside a kitchen designer at Howdens, we came up with a new layout that best suited the space.’ Living on a building site with a toddler was far from easy, but within three months the family had a beautiful, fully functioning kitchen.
Restoring the house to its former glory and working with its natural assets has been important to Siobhan and Rory. ‘Although many of the period features had been stripped away over the years, we did our best to retain
the ones that remained,’ says Siobhan. ‘We spent money on salvaged cast-iron radiators and painstakingly stripped back the original pine flooring and staircase, reinstating features that would’ve once been part of the house – the vestibule in the entrance hall and the mantelpieces in the bedrooms – and uncovering hidden treasures, like the original tiles in the entrance and boarded up fireplaces.’
A love of vintage
Siobhan and Rory have kept to a palette of neutral whites that have surprising depth, and introduced colour in the soft furnishings and repainted furniture – adding statement colours in the smaller spaces. ‘I love anything old and enjoy scouring the local charity shops and salvage yards for vintage finds to make our home look and feel more lived in,’ says Siobhan, who has also captured the renovation process on her Instagram account @home__stead.
With the couple’s second daughter, Nora, joining the family two years ago and another baby on the way, the Mcfadden’s home is constantly evolving. ‘There are still lots of things we would like to do, but I think there always will be,’ smiles Siobhan. ‘We have lovingly restored our little Victorian terrace into a beautiful home for our growing family. Our hard work has paid off!’