Rebecca and Dickson completed their flat renovation at the beginning of 2024, turning what was a maze of dark, separate rooms into more of an open plan layout, with lots of natural light, storage and space for their family to grow together.
Head to our YouTube channel to watch Rebecca & Dickson's episode of Change of Plans.
Where is the house, and what's the history of the property?
The house was built around 1900, so cusping Victorian and Edwardian. It's in a really lovely area; every house in the Mapesbury Conservation Area are red brick double fronted houses. A lot of them have been turned into flats, but they've really kept the integrity of the area, so it's difficult to tell which ones are converted and which are the full houses. Some history on the area; it was farmland a long, long time ago, and the trigger for all of the development in the area was the station. This unlocked people travelling from this area into the city, and then the roads around were developed and they were all named after famous people. The trees around here are all protected too, as there's a focus on making sure that the area maintains its greenery. It gives that nice balance between being able to hop on a tube and travel into Central London in 10 minutes, but you almost feel like you live in a village. So it's the best of both worlds!
What made you choose this property?
We wanted to live in an area that was family friendly, that had bigger outdoor spaces. We were looking around north-west London, and as soon as we saw this flat in particular and where it was situated, we fell in love with it. We thought, this is something that we could put quite a lot of love into, to restore some of its heritage and beauty. We repainted everything straight away; it was fairly cosmetic stuff to begin with. We wanted to live here for a while and get a feel for how we use the space as a family, and then decide how we might want to change it. We didn't want to jump straight into something and then realise later on that it didn't actually work for us.
We worked out pretty quickly that we wanted a big open kitchen area. I like to have a hosting space; I have a big family and when they come over, typically I will be in the kitchen cooking and all of my family gather around the table. So we learned quickly that we wanted to have a big kitchen, but also be able to look through into the living room so people could flow in and out without feeling cramped in. And it's worked out really well with our kid too, he can play in the living room and we can be in here and can still keep an eye on him.
It took a few months of living in the flat before we committed to the project, and I'm someone that's always looking on various apps and websites to try to figure out what I can change in a property - I love a project. I had a vision of making this slightly more open plan, changing a few things, and generally making the space slightly more interesting.
What were the difficulties with the previous layout, and how did you come to choose the new layout?
The property felt like a series of rooms that were very closed off from each other. As soon as you entered the flat, the hallway was really dark. We are blessed with big windows in the kitchen and living room, so there was quite a lot of light that went into those two rooms, but the light was restricted because the two rooms were separate, with stairs effectively cutting across both - which made opening up the space really problematic. So we knew how to potentially take out some walls and change things up a bit, the difficulty of the project was the stairs. What do you do when you've got stairs cutting across the two rooms?
One option is to completely relocate the stairs, and we did think about that. The initial set of architectural drawings had the stairs running near to the front door, but that would have meant a complete restructure of the property, as we'd have to create new openings, change bedroom sizes, potentially even change the upstairs bathroom. We had multiple versions of trying to work out what to do with the stairs!
We decided that we didn't hate the property enough to go ahead with the larger project, and we realised there was a smaller version of renovation that we could do that still gave us the link between the kitchen and the living room that didn't involve us completely turning the property upside down. We went through a few iterations of architectural drawings and decided to keep the stairs roughly where they were, which meant that upstairs could be relatively left intact. We removed part of the wall from underneath the stairs and effectively opened up the second wall that links the kitchen to the living room.
There were challenges along the way that we needed to overcome; one was where to put the washing machine, and we also needed to move the boiler, because the boiler was on the wall under the stairs, which we managed to do. We could then start to figure out how wide we wanted the opening. Because we lost the cupboard too, we had a few questions around what storage we could create, so we ended up creating cupboards which we've hidden through wooden panelling, which we really like. We also decided to create an internal window in our kitchen to allow the light from our huge window into the hallway. So as soon as you walk into the flat, it's really light and airy.
What made you choose Resi as your partner for this project?
The reason I was super attracted to Resi was you offered a 360 degree capture of the building - someone came over with a scanner and took pictures and measurements of the whole building, inside and out, which allowed all sorts of information to be transferred into a 3D online model. And once you had captured that, it made moving the spaces and restructuring the property relatively simple. We both work in marketing for a tech company, and we thought that was a really smart way to overcome that challenge of how to visualise adapting a property; you have a virtual view of the plans, which was really interesting.
And then the other process I especially liked with Resi is that the payments are structured and staggered. So you pay for the initial survey, and then you'll pay as soon as the initial drawings are done, and you pay for any revisions - it felt more accessible, as you weren't having to lay out a lot of costs up front.
It very much felt like a smart, tech-friendly company that were focused on us having a really good user experience.
Photography & Videography by Peter Furlong.
