At their airy, light-filled Georgian flat in Edinburgh, Eilidh Izat and Jack Arundell tell us of how their home supports their multifaceted lives, which at any one time sees them run an architecture practice, a design studio, a series of supper clubs and their holiday let, Porteous Studio, in the centre of town. 

I said to Jack on our first date, ‘I have just bought a flat, but it’s got a really crappy kitchen.’ ‘I’ll build you a kitchen,’ he said, and that was the deal!

“We met at the Edinburgh Jazz festival in 2014. We moved in together the following month, pretty much. Jack was living with people from uni and I had my own place, so we spent most of our time at mine.

“I remember we were walking one day, and you said, ‘Do you actually mind me staying at yours every single night?’ I was like, ‘It’s fine.’ So, it was an unconscious moving in!”

“That was the flat we were in before moving here. It was very small, and we quickly realised we couldn’t build the kitchen in the flat, so we approached Namon Gaston, a furniture maker based in Edinburgh, and luckily he agreed to help. I did half the labour at his studio to reduce costs, and we since have worked with him on the kitchen at Porteous, and I have just finished designing and making a chair  with him too.

“The kitchen was mine and Eilidh’s first project together, although it wasn’t a conscious thing at the time.”