Rising ambition

A simple plan to add some natural light and create a family-friendly kitchen in an Edwardian home has ended up as a dramatic extend-and-refurbish project for Scott and Anne Leiper

WORDS CAROLINE EDNIE PHOTOS HYVE ARCHITECTS

What started as a modest scheme to remodel a kitchen within a period Edwardian villa didn’t quite end up that way for Scott Leiper. “One thing led to another and the project became a large-scale undertaking,” he says. This is no understatement: what eventually materialised was not only an impressive two-storey contemporary extension to the property in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, but the transformation of the existing house, too. The renovation included repurposing some rooms and opening up the top floor to create a new living area, as well as rewiring, replumbing and redecorating.

“The scope changed – my fault entirely,” says Scott, who shares the house with his wife Anne and their two children, Harris and Isla. “We bit the bullet and thought ‘let’s do it once and do it properly’, and now we’ve future-proofed the property for the next 20-30 years.”

The sleek, minimalist kitchen has been moved into the open-plan space in the extension

Let there be light

The catalyst for initiating the project, four years after the Leipers first moved into this handsome sandstone property, was a need to create a more family-friendly space. “As with many Edwardian properties of this size, the kitchen was situated on the less favourable side of the house, in this case the north elevation. So the original idea was to move it, to increase the amount of natural daylight entering the space,” says Scott. “Illumination became the main theme of the project. We looked at brightening the hallway by incorporating a large skylight above and also thought carefully about the individual rooms of the existing house and what we wanted in each. We then decided to go ahead and approach Nikki Ritchie of Stonehaven-based Hyve Architects, who we had worked with on renovations to two of our previous homes.”