Design Sponge is that rare beast: a site about interiors and design, which has real soul and character - masses of credit to founder Grace Bonney for featuring homes belonging to people you really want to get to know.
So of course I was honoured when Design Sponge asked if they could feature The Pink House on their beautiful, inspirational site. So without further ado, click HERE for the feature, complete with pics of The Pink House in Edinburgh, or read the feature below...
A HOUSE FINDS ITS HEART IN COLOR IN EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND
Emily Murray, creator of the interiors blog, The Pink House, and her husband Euan Murray live in The Pink House — which, in addition the name of Emily’s blog, is also their real-life Victorian home in Edinburgh, Scotland. Euan (CEO of The Sustainability Consortium, a global nonprofit group based in the U.S.) and Emily share their pink house with their two sons, Oscar, 7, and Zac, 4. We love Emily’s approach to the design of her home, which stemmed from the love of former less-than-kid-friendly haunts. “Since having kids, I haven’t been able to get out so much to the gorgeous bars, hotels etc. that I used to frequent before the small Pink House dwellers came along,” Emily shares. “So when it came to decorating my family home, I did so in a style that is intended to recreate the fabulous places I used to go. It’s a way of living my old, child-free London party life, but in Edinburgh, and while spending half my time picking Cheerios off the floor or emptying potties full of wee. I’m a firm believer that just because you have kids, doesn’t mean your house has to be drab, dull and simply functional — it can still be fabulous.”
The Pink House wasn’t always so fabulous; when Emily came down from England to house-hunt six years ago, the house’s exterior was a dirty white. While Emily was disappointed to be leaving their England home, both her and Euan’s parents lived in Edinburgh and the willing-and-available childcare helped soften the blow of leaving their London lifestyle behind. So much of finding this home had seemed somewhat meant to be. The Pink House was only the third Emily had seen on her very first day of house hunting and the moment she stepped through the door, she knew it was “the one.” While the colors on both the outside and inside were lackluster, and the open-plan kitchen Emily had on her must-have list was nonexistent, she knew she would “do anything” for this house. “I’m no fatalist or spiritualist, but its soul spoke to me in a way that meant all practicalities went out the badly-fitted sash window,” Emily admits. “So we bought it, and began its transformation into a colorful, fabulous family home.”
The renovations and transformation from the dirty-white Arts-And-Crafts style Victorian to the fabulous Pink House that it is today took six years. And naturally, just as it’s completely finished, the family has decided to place The Pink House on the market. The first step in the renovations was creating the open-plan kitchen Emily had dreamed of, which entailed knocking down the wall between the kitchen and living room, creating a big family room. Emily shares, “The rooms run north-south, so as well as gaining the opportunity to keep an eye on the kids (break up fights) while cooking (heating stuff up), the knock-through also means the north-facing kitchen area benefits from the daylight streaming through the south-facing living area windows.” While knocking down walls for the open-plan kitchen sounds like a big makeover, it was actually the bathroom that made the most radical transformation. The bathroom, like the exterior, was uninspired, but Emily saw to gutting it and creating her dream bathroom in its place. The latest project was taking their dingy basement and transforming it into “The Den” — which acts as their space for watching movies, the guest bedroom and home office, and where Emily’s vision — beginning with grasscloth walls — was brought to life by Jessica Buckley Interiors.
One of the most special elements of their home is the “Centenary Scrapbook” they were given when they moved in. When their 15-house street celebrated its 100-year “birthday” (in 1999), the scrapbook was created to share information about why the houses were built, historical information about how they were built, a list of everyone who had lived in each house on the street and even what color their house was originally painted — white. If only every house purchase came with one of these! —Rebekah
