Inside Her Cosy Victorian Home in Glasgow

My house is converted servants' quarters of a Victorian townhouse in the west end of Glasgow. So it was built in around 1870. It didn't have the fancy period features or big banisters or entrance halls, but it's still very much a Victorian home. In the winter months it is a So I embraced the darkness and decided to make the darkness a cosy cocooning feature. My name is Anne-Marie and I live in Glasgow. Until relatively recently I was in a full-time legal career and then I retired and now I'm very much involved in the homes and interiors community in Scotland. We've lived here now for eight years. I live here with my husband. It's quite hard to describe the layout of my house. When you enter in the ground floor there's a dining kitchen and a downstairs toilet, but then there's a small flight of stairs to the living room and then a large flight of stairs to our bedroom and an ensuite and then another flight of stairs to two more bedrooms and the family bathroom. So it's what I would call a quirky house. It's got a very unusual layout, but I think that adds to the character. So when we moved into this house every single room was the same colour. It actually was depressing. The thing was having decided to change one room and the first room I actually did was the dining kitchen. It was very much a kitchen that had a table in it. We don't have two public rooms so I very much wanted the dining area to be a comfortable place where you could sit while someone was cooking or have a chat. It is the room that looks out onto the garden so I decided it should be a green to sort of bring the outside in. I do like to bring in old things to the room though so I have a tram sign from Highland which is actually an original tram sign that I acquired at a market in Glasgow. I like to think that my rooms tell a wee bit of a story about us. You get the idea that we enjoy our cooking, that we enjoy relaxing. We've got various cookery books and I love plants and that idea of a wee bit of our local heritage with the tram sign. My favourite spot in the kitchen is definitely my green love seat which I've had in various places in the kitchen but I think it's found its home in the corner it's in now. I totally enjoy sitting there with a glass of wine while my husband makes my dinner. Up until 2020 I don't think I really noticed particularly interiors and design and styling for houses. Then in 2020 just before Covid I was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer which meant that when the world locked down I was very much locked down. I was shielding and was to a certain extent in my house and gardens. I'm not very good at sitting still and doing nothing so I started to upcycle pieces of furniture and add colour that way. The more I experimented with colour in the house the more it gave me comfort. I mistakenly thought that to deal with the darkness I had to paint everything white and I painted the whole hall white and it looked like a very depressing hospital corridor. So then I realised that actually I really had to embrace the darkness. When I realised that I really really enjoyed it and was going to be bold with it was having painted the living room in haig blue. I genuinely felt slightly terrified but when it was finished I did have that moment of thinking now I've done something that I'm really proud of and I'm really special and I love the way the colour of the room looks different in different lights. The ceiling is exactly the same as the walls but the ceiling looks different from the walls. It's just the most cosy cocooning room. It's so comfortable. It feels so warm. It suits every sort of weather. When it's dark then you light candles and you have lamps. I think I have an obsession with candles. I like candles of all shapes and sizes. I think it complements the idea of the decor being cosy and cocooning to have candlelight. I have candlelight throughout the year. Nostalgia means to me the idea of remembering or giving a nod to people or places or memories that were really important to you. So I think it's important to mix old with new. I have an antique Singer sewing machine table alongside some more modern furniture. First of all I think they're just beautiful objects and it's a beautiful table but it's a wee bit of that sort of industrial and social heritage of both our families so that feels quite special and they all have serial numbers. So the Singer sewing machine that I have was built in Clydebank in 1904. The hall in this house is narrow and dark. It in particular needed something to give it an idea of life and the idea that it was a stairway worth noticing as against just a place that took you from one floor to another. So the hall is a gallery wall of travel prints and the rule of the gallery wall is that the prints can only be in the wall if my husband and I have visited the place together and really enjoyed it and that's a rule I won't break. The bedroom upstairs again was that extraordinarily bland neutral colour and just had no character at all and it's a beautiful big room. So I obviously wanted to do something with it. Again initially it was just the walls and we didn't do the windows or the ceiling. The white ceiling just seemed very stark against the black. I decided I wanted to get rid of the white ceiling. I admit to being slightly terrified because it seemed to be probably the boldest decision I've made to have a black bedroom with a Etruscan red ceiling. When it was finished my sons actually said it's as if you're just going to sleep in a perpetual sunset and that has just stayed in my mind. I was brought up with white ceilings. I think we were all brought up with white ceilings. Once I started painting ceilings in the same colour as the room or even a contrasting colour, to be honest I found it extremely attractive to the point now that in the whole house I only have two white ceilings left. In the black bedroom I have as a piece of art on my wall an antique optician's chart which actually is from an optician's in the west end of Glasgow. I've had glasses since I was two and I always loved going to opticians. I just immediately bought it because I thought it was just me and I really like it even though I know it's a bit weird. The ensuite bathroom that comes off the black bedroom needed a complete revamp and refurbishment. It had to look like the ensuite of a boutique hotel and to feel luxurious and to fit with the black bedroom. We don't have the best of weather so the idea of having a garden room in Glasgow is maybe quite novel especially because it's a room that is only three-sided and isn't completely enclosed. I start my day sitting outside having a cup of tea or a cup of coffee in the garden room and just taking in the outdoors, getting some fresh air and deciding where I'm going for the day. It is a shelter from the sun in the summer, it is a warm cosy nook with a chimney in the winter and there's something very lovely about just spending time in the outdoors. This whole homes and interiors journey was very much part of my rehabilitation from illness. My whole life has changed because of the interest in colour and styling interiors that I got through this house. I write for a Glasgow magazine and I have my own company organising homes and interiors events for enthusiasts across the country. Despite the fact that that all started from something very scary, I would honestly say it's taken me on a journey that has been one of the best things that's ever happened to me and it does really feel like a lovely home to come into and a lovely warm home to be in.