Inside a 1960s Council Flat Turned Sanctuary in Edinburgh

There is a particular kind of courage in making peace with a place you didn’t choose wholeheartedly.

Eileen Inglis had spent twenty years in a tenement in Edinburgh’s Canonmills: high ceilings, big windows, a kitchen table large enough to gather everyone around.

When she had to leave, she started looking for somewhere to buy, which, for a single mother on a modest income in one of Britain’s most expensive cities, was rather easier said than done.

What Eileen found was a 1960s ex-local authority flat in Newhaven, right across from the harbour: lower ceilings, smaller kitchen, not a trace of Georgian.

She had three weeks to renovate it. She made a lot of fast decisions. She has no regrets.

In Their Own Words: Eileen Inglis on Making Fast Moves, Falling in Love Slowly, and Not Looking Back

My name is Eileen Inglis. I currently work at Edinburgh University supporting university founders to start businesses. I also work as a freelancer in the social enterprise sector, and I run my own micro business called The Conversation Project.

I’ve lived in Newhaven for just under a year. I moved here from Canonmills, where I’d been living for twenty years. I’d been renting a flat from someone I knew for those twenty years, and her daughter was taking over the property, so I started looking for somewhere to buy. With prices in Edinburgh being what they are, that was a bit challenging.

I live with my daughter, and we’ve been really lucky to find somewhere right across from the harbour in Newhaven.

This flat is very different from any other flat I’ve lived in in Edinburgh. I’ve always lived in tenements. I really love old buildings; I love the high ceilings, the windows. But this flat is actually a 1960s ex-local authority flat, so it’s very different in its proportions and layout. I’m growing to love it.

There’s a lot of light in this flat, although it’s got much lower ceilings than what I’ve previously been used to in Edinburgh. At the back of the building, there’s pretty much a wall of windows, so the kitchen and the living room get light coming in all the way around.

The rooms are more boxy than a tenement, but it’s actually got a really good layout and floor plan for an ex-local authority flat. It’s two bedrooms with a separate bathroom, a living room, and a small kitchen. The rooms are a really great size, and there’s loads of storage space.

When I took the flat on, I had lots of plans about what I wanted to do with it, but I had a very short window of three weeks between moving out of my previous flat and into this. Luckily, I had a builder on hand who was ready to go. The flat didn’t have any awful carpets or wallpaper; it was actually painted white, with some wooden flooring that wasn’t necessarily my choice, so the backdrop was there.

I had to make a choice about which room I was going to do first and what I could live with. I looked at the bathroom and kitchen, both of which needed significant upgrades.

My builder hadn’t really planned to take the whole bathroom back to its skeleton bones: initially, I was just going to retile it and put everything back in. But I came round one day and he had literally stripped the room back, and you could see through into the fabric of the building. Actually, that was really good in a way, because it just meant I was then able to replace everything.

Once you get to see behind the scenes and learn a bit about how things work, it’s a bit less frightening. I’ve renovated a flat before, and doing things like that has made me less frightened of buildings and the things that can go wrong in them.

I took the old bath out and replaced it with a walk-in shower, and tiled all the walls. Because it’s an internal bathroom, I didn’t want to have to deal with painting walls if there was any condensation.

One of the renovation decisions I took was to take all the cupboards off the kitchen wall. I had this vision of just a nice wall tiled with very simple square white tiles and dark grout. So I tiled everything right up to the ceiling and kept the white IKEA units and a worktop I wasn’t very keen on (but ran out of time, so those stayed for now). There was one cupboard at the end I almost kept, and I’m really glad I just got rid of them all. It opens up the wall space and makes the kitchen feel a lot more spacious. I don’t regret it at all.

The majority of the work was painting. There were a lot of wood cupboard doors in the flat in a really horrible nicotine white colour, so that was a lot of sanding. But the main work was a new bathroom and a semi-new kitchen.

The most stressful thing about the renovation was having to make lots of decisions that involved spending quite a lot of money quite quickly. I already had a clear idea of what I wanted the space to look like, but I went with a lot of white on the walls and tiles. I did have some ideas for adding colour, but I felt it was too much of a commitment — and because I was making decisions really quickly, I didn’t want to do something and then regret it.

In some ways, this flat is smaller than my old one. The old flat in Canonmills had a huge tenement kitchen with a massive table, which I absolutely loved — that was the thing I was most worried about missing.

When I first moved here, I did feel a little displaced for a couple of months. I felt I didn’t really have space if I was working from home, or to invite people round for dinner. I used to use my kitchen a lot — as well as a big kitchen table, it had a desk and working area.

That was the bit I found hardest.

On the flip side, my daughter went from having a box room to actually having quite a large bedroom here. We gained space in some areas and lost it in others. And despite the kitchen here being a lot smaller, it’s got a lot of light and it’s actually a lot more functional than the kitchen in my other flat, which wasn’t that well designed.

I’ve always been interested in interiors; in fact, if I was to do my career again, I might do something like interior design. My home has always been a really important part of who I am. Even in the past when I’ve rented properties, which I’ve done for years, I’ve always decorated them, bought all my own furniture, and really made them my own.

Going from a tenement into a 1960s ex-local authority flat is quite different in shape, size, and the way the furniture works. I brought all my furniture here, and I had a beautiful old leather Georgian armchair which I’ve sadly had to sell because it just didn’t work in here.

For inspiration, I’ve got a lot of interiors books, and I started looking at places like the Barbican in London. There’s actually a brilliant website with interviews with residents of the Barbican where you can see inside their flats. It was inspiring to see people with flats that are a similar shape, size, and layout to this.

I also had a look at a building in London called Trellick Tower to get inspired. This is a brutalist high-rise which is mainly social housing, but there are some private flats in there selling for ridiculous amounts of money.

Most of the artwork I have has either been done by friends or gathered up over the years travelling. There’s a really brightly coloured vintage Moroccan poster on my kitchen wall. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Morocco, and I got that there.

The living room is the main room for me. I’m in there all the time. My daughter spends a lot of time in her bedroom, but I go into my bedroom to sleep — so the living room and the kitchen are where I spend most of my time. When I come home at the end of the day, I just like to relax there.

I like spending my time at home, which is why the decor and the environment are important to me. To wind down at night, I might listen to music, watch a film or a documentary. The most recent one was Banjo and Ro’s Grand Island Hotel — about two guys who renovated a derelict stately home near Mull, which a lot of Scottish people might have seen.

I don’t really read novels; I haven’t read one in years. Most of the books I have are non-fiction: interiors, some personal development, cookery books to get inspired.

I really like cooking, which is partly why I was a bit sad to leave my big kitchen table behind. I mostly cook all our food from scratch. At the moment we’re eating a lot of grilled fish — salmon with rice and salad. I recently managed to find the recipe for Dishoom’s broccoli and chilli salad online, so I’ve been making quite a lot of that. And lentil soup — I seem to have perfected my spicy lentil soup recipe at the moment.

Home means a place of safety — a sanctuary. Most of my friends would agree that I’m quite organised, so I like things around me to feel ordered. I wouldn’t say I’m a real minimalist, but I don’t like mess and clutter. My home has to feel organised in some way.