The renovation game

Renovating an old building is certainly never dull. Chances are that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, and sometimes spiralling costs and delayed openings are unavoidable. But, as always, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about things, and there's never too much planning you can do before raising that first sledgehammer in anger.

One man who seems to have got it right is James Thomson, owner of Edinburgh restaurants the Tower and the Witchery, who last year spent £2m on the first phase of a project to restore and refurbish the city's historic Prestonfield House hotel.

Renovating the building has been "a real labour of love", Thomson says. A self-confessed hopeless romantic, he fell in love with the property while working there as a banqueting waiter, aged 17. "But it had a slightly sad feel, like it needed a bit of investment," he says. "There were too many Parker Knoll chairs. It was like visiting an old aunt."

Although the property had seen investment in the 1990s, when a block of bedrooms was added at the rear of the property, the main house was still the same, and even the new bedrooms "lacked soul".

Thomson had a frustrating two-year wait from the time he was approached by the owners, "but when the deal was signed we didn't hang around", he says. On the morning of the day he was to sign the deal, Thomson went to the hotel to talk to the staff. On his way back down the drive, he was passed by two vans full of furniture and fittings, going up the drive. "By the time I returned to the hotel," he says, "all the ‘old folks home-style' fittings had been replaced by temporary furniture, the front door had been painted in my colours, dark red, and there were six tubs of trees out front."

Prestonfield offered Thomson a number of challenges. For starters, it was a bigger project than he was used to; it was a historic building; it was a running business; and the deal took a month longer than expected to complete, so he didn't get in until July. And then there was the decision to bring the opening date forward by a month because media group MTV wanted to hold a dinner for 120 glitterati the night before hosting the MTV European Music Awards in Edinburgh last November.

Phase one of the project was focused on the main house, although the decision was taken early on to spend some money improving the banqueting function, including a partial renovation of the circular banqueting suite, which is housed in the former stables and seats 550. This year, Thomson expects "easily" to double or even treble the banqueting business the hotel did last year, and the stables will see a more thorough makeover in phase two of the project. "It already looks like a different space, with a different style of food, but it still needs a fairly substantial investment," he says.

A lot of the work on the project has gone into faithfully restoring the rooms to the glory they had when the building was a private house, and making the most of the original fittings. The "leather room", for example, has incredible leather tapestries on the walls, which have hung there since 1687. But when Thomson acquired the property, the room was full of "wretched 1970s furniture" and "looked like an airport waiting room".

As elsewhere, the garish or fuddy-duddy 1970s hues were replaced with a richer, more opulent palette of reds, gold and greens. Three pairs of heavy, antique silk curtains - which Thomson had earlier bought in an auction for £5,000 a pair - were introduced, and the walls covered with a sumptuous, hand-painted wallpaper embossed with velvet and brocade. The old chairs were replaced with comfy antique sofas, and the dodgy old heaters ousted in favour of roaring fires.

"Opulence is definitely back," Thomson says, with a palpable sense of relief. "I think people have got fed up with minimalism and the designer look."

As with any restoration, one of the joys is the discovery of something truly special. One such example at Prestonfield was when the upper floor in the entrance hall was removed to reveal the 17th-century decorative plasterwork ceiling above, believed to have been covered for almost 200 years.

One could argue that Thomson has to open new ventures every now and then just to find a home for his burgeoning collection of antiques. "I'm a Cancerian so I'm a great hoarder," he says. Combined with the roaring fires and the rich, dark colours of the rooms, which give way to plum walls and black woodwork in the corridors, the antiques-a-plenty approach helps to give the hotel a special, individualistic atmosphere. The "whisky room", for example, has a sofa and chairs with real antlers incorporated in the construction, which he picked up in a Parisian flea market.

The walls are dotted with portraits of the building's former owners, and curios relating to the building's past. "It's nice that the history of the house has been kept alive," Thomson says. "We've got a duty to future generations to protect our heritage. You are only the guardian of a house like this."

But the faithful, traditional approach has a strong modernistic twist. Thomson has invested heavily in technology, although he has been at pains to keep it well hidden. So while he has put in air-conditioning units, 32in plasma TV screens and DVD players in the hotel rooms (and offers free access to a DVD and CD library), he is also putting in tailor-made oak cabinets to hide it all. The hotel has a wireless network for internet access, negating the need for unsightly cables, and dinky bedside entertainment systems from Bose which offer radio, CD and alarm clock functions.

Even the necessary functional fitments of the hotel are well hidden, such as the check-in desk, which is situated towards the back of the hotel.

Thomson says that taking over Prestonfield has been "like adopting a child that was very set in its ways". He adds: "It's an institution. The difficult things have been the soft things, like changing the culture and getting the trust of the staff and the guests, who have loved it and supported it for many years. Some people will hate it but 99% of people love what we've done - and about 95% of the regulars love it."

One obvious result of the refurbishment has been a broadening of the property's appeal to include a younger, trendier clientele.

"It has been a huge learning curve," Thomson admits. "All my businesses before this have involved starting with an empty shell, a blank canvas. At Prestonfield, there was a business going on, and we had to deal with that. We shut for only 10 days, to take the ceiling down. It has been very frustrating because I like to see things happen quite quickly, but you can't get perfection without paying and waiting."

Thomson describes Prestonfield as a work in progress - like the Witchery, where the suites are "always evolving". He says: "It's theatre. You can't have the same suites all the time. Guests want something new."

So has this latest project whetted his appetite for more? "I'd rather see this through first," he says. "I'd quite like to design some of the old formal gardens and recreate another kitchen garden. I've got enough on my plate for the next few years."

Is that a "no", then? "I'd never say ‘never'," he grins. "Things pop up. But, for me, I've really got to do it. If my heart weren't in it, I couldn't do it." n