CLEAN AND POLISH

Ten years in the making, this one-time dental surgery in Portobello has been reshaped as an elegant, practical family home

- Caroline Ednie

Lorna and Themis Agorastos were on their honeymoon in Sardinia in 2012 when they spotted a house for sale on the ESPC website. They'd been thinking for some time about relocating from Leeds to be closer to Lorna's family in Edinburgh, and had been keeping an eye out for suitable properties. Little did they know then that this house in the seaside suburb of Portobello would shape the next decade of their lives.

"We'd been looking for a family home that we could take on as a long-term project - something we could put our stamp on," says Lorna, director of Edinburgh-based Agora Architecture and Design. "We could see that this property would be a challenge, but we went and took a look at it when we got back from our honeymoon. We fell in love with the house and the location. It just felt like it was meant to be."

The main challenge facing them was that the Grade B-listed Georgian semidetached villa had been converted into a dentist's surgery in 1907, and had remained that way ever since. "On that first viewing there was still a dentist's chair in one of the rooms," Lorna recalls. "All the walls were wipeable white panelling, and the floors were covered in thick concrete screed and vinyl. We didn't know what we'd find behind those surfaces, but we had a feeling the bones of the original house were still there."

The couple immediately embarked on remodelling plans, taking on as much of the work themselves as they could manage. "We decided to work through the house one room at a time. We didn't have children, and we couldn't afford to convert and restore the whole house at once, nor did we need all of the space, so it made sense to do it as and when required."