One of the first things we noticed on visiting this three bedroom sixties bungalow in North Berwick was its leafy south-facing garden. This was ideal for our clients’ energetic dog, but less so for them, as they had to grapple with a confused interior layout and an ageing conservatory each time they headed outside.
The scene from the front door was particularly uninviting (just a blank wall and a bathroom door) but the back door problem was bigger: there wasn’t one.
The owners wanted light, warmth and above all practical flow, a space that would withstand whatever the coastal weather threw at them.
AGORA’s response was to both improve and extend, reconfiguring the front of the house to create a line of sight through to a new open plan zone at the rear.
Relocating the original ‘blocker’ bathroom to an adjacent bedroom revealed views of the garden right from the front step, while we retained the bedroom count by subdividing the original primary living room into two: a family snug and a nursery for the couple’s newborn daughter.
Meanwhile the larch-clad addition to the back of the house transformed the original narrow kitchen into a welcoming family space, with an all-important back door, boot and utility room to one side and a glazed feature corner on the other, opening out into the garden. Here a powder-coated alumunium overhang provides shelter from the better Scottish seasons (warm rain and sun) and sliding alu-clad timber doors ward off the worst (cold rain, sleet and snow).
High performance glazing continues in the rooflight around the client’s longed-for log burner, with an AGORA-designed window seat and media wall matching the handle-less Archispek kitchen. We’ve used streamlined joinery elsewhere too, to demarcate different zones – for example the roomy storage wall dividing the kitchen island from the inviting sofa, and the pocket door which closes off the high spec utility room.
The clients’ choices of warm earth tones for cabinetry, timber and furnishings ground the scheme in bad weather and glow in good, creating a wonderful home all year round. And, when it’s wild out, they now have a place to wash off dog and kids too, ensuring the space will stay shiny long into the future.
AGORA’s favourite features:
Design: the larch junctions of the soffit which match the herringbone patterns picked by the clients for the flooring and hearth. The setting out took some time to get right, but it was very much worth it.
Practical: correcting the ‘wiggly’ front entry and drawing a line front to back by nudging the bathroom next door (which also meant we could reuse the existing plumbing connections).
