J


ane, a dentist and Sam, who is a doctor, were living in Inverness when they decided a move to Edinburgh was on the cards. In July 2022, the couple came across a terraced property in the West of Edinburgh. Jane arranged a viewing and while it appealed to her, she knew instantly changes would have to be made if it was to work for her and Sam. “The layout felt weird,” Jane recalls. “And, the


front of the house didn’t match the back,” Sam adds. This “weird” layout consisted of a traditional, corniced sitting room at the front of the house and a kitchen towards the rear, which was joined with a fl at roof extension that incorporated a WCutility space. This extension was located at the back of the building, but off centre and had created two rather unusable patio areas. Upstairs, there was a family bathroom and four bedrooms. Keen to make the house usable as quickly as possible, the couple didn’t waste any time, as Jane


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explains We wanted to make it our space, so we didn’t see any reason to put the renovations on hold.” Within three months, the couple had set up a meeting with Edinburgh-based architects, Pend. “I had seen posts from Pend on Instagram and there wasn’t a project of theirs that I didn’t like,” Jane continues. “We didn’t look at anyone else.” The couple both agree that this was possibly uite a naive approach to such an expensive undertaking, but they were also realistic about their own abilities, as Sam explains We came into this knowing that we didn’t know anything about self-building, but we were also aware that we didn’t have the time to learn anything about it either. We both work full-time, so we thought we might as well fi nd someone who knew what they were doing. We’re complete novices, but also, we didn’t really know what we wanted to do or what we could do with the space. We didn’t even know how big we could go.”


HIGH POINT


The fi rst time we walked in when it was fi nished. You never really know how good it’s going to be and I was pretty wowed. It’s slightly embarrassing when people come over and say this is amazing and it’s really nice how many people have been inspired by it.” – Jane


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