Christine Hamilton successfully transformed a church hall in the Scottish Borders into a three-bedroom house

WORDS CAROLINE EDNIE

Siberian larch cladding and a smooth coat of pewter grey render form a contemporary partnership on the front facade of the house

PHOTOS DAVID BARBOUR

When Christine Hamilton was mulling over the idea of renovating a family-owned former church hall in her hometown of Kelso in the Scottish Borders, her initial thought was to reroof and update the property so she could rent it out for extra income. But her plans soon changed into a full conversion project.

“My family bought the church hall over 25 years ago as a location for our children’s nursery business,” says Christine. Since moving premises 10 years ago, the property was leased out as an art gallery and framing studio. “I always loved the building. So, I began to think about giving it a new lease of life,” she says.

Initially, Christine considered splitting the property in two, creating a large family home for her parents at the back of the long building, with a smaller separate house at the front. “At the time, my mum and dad weren’t quite ready to move into town and I couldn’t finance the whole thing myself,” says Christine. She decided to scale the project back and started investigating the options for developing just the street-facing portion of the hall into a compact family home, while retaining a commercial element in the form of a storage and office space at the back.

Design details

It was seeing a modern property designed by local architects, Chambers McMillan, called Ramp House, that inspired Christine to take on the ambitious conversion project. So she approached architect Ian McMillan and design director Thea McMillan to come up with a design for her conversion. “I was keen to retain as much of the original structure and character of the church hall as possible, yet also have an accessible house,” says Christine. “At the time I lived in a converted hospital in Edinburgh, where my gran once worked, so I love a building with a history, connections to family and a story to tell.”