The magic door…

When my architects, Thea and Ian from Chambers McMillan Architects, showed me a model for the house design, the most exciting part for me was the reuse of the ‘magic door’! For nearly 30 years the building had a suspended ceiling, and only the bottom half of this door was visible below it, a mystical door from days gone by. When the ceiling was removed and the full door exposed at the start of the project, it was clear it had a crude, homemade ‘stable door’ design.

Yes, this was an old access into the small attic, which was remodelled into a bedroom and ensuite during the build. But the attic had another entrance from the old boiler cupboard. And what was the stable door for? When it was a church hall the building was used for a whole range of activities, including dances, and from the white painted lines we found on the original wooden floor a bit of sporting fun too. In my mind, the stable door would have been a perfect spot for umpiring badminton games, and I’ve yet to find someone locally who can tell me anything different so I’m sticking with it for now!

Removal of the original hipped attic room, remodelling of the roof to create the headroom for a useable space upstairs, the addition of a staircase, and pondering over sketches of the stair wall designs before the final shape was constructed…lots of change, except to the magic door. Or doorway…the door itself unfortunately didn’t fit the brief and had to be replaced, but the doorway remains a little bit of old in what is a very modern feeling space.

After seeing a yellow staircase in an online article years ago, I knew I wanted one of my own! Mister David by Little Greene brings a glowing, happy vibe to a sometimes forgotten space of a stairwell, and featured on the front cover of Urban Realm’s Architecture Scotland Annual 2021, as photographed by the brilliant David Barbour.