The old kitchen is now a laundry and shower room. Downstairs, its replacement looks through a dining area towards the garden. In this Kentish Town house, that change of address is the clearest sign that two flats have become one home.

The owners, a designer and a creative director working in film, had owned the upper maisonette for fourteen years when the lower flat became available. The early Victorian house was familiar territory, but taking on the rooms below opened up a different way of living in it. Architecture for London brought the two properties together and moved the kitchen from the first floor to the centre of the ground-floor plan.

The new kitchen looks through the dining area to the garden. Photography: Building Narratives.

Dark cupboards fill one side of the new kitchen, a yellow island occupies the middle and three metal pendants lead the eye towards the brighter dining space. There is a view beyond the worktop, through the glazed doors and into greenery. Even from the working end of the room, the garden remains part of the picture.

Moving cooking downstairs gives the reunited house a shared centre, with room to cook, sit and eat on the same floor. It also releases the former kitchen for another use. The change reaches both halves of the old arrangement: where the household gathers, and what the rooms upstairs need to accommodate.

Beside the dining table, a white shelving unit makes a surprisingly delicate division. Its low cabinet provides a solid base, but above it the gaps between books, bowls and a trailing plant allow glimpses of the seat beyond. The shelves organise the view without turning into another wall.

Open shelving separates the dining table from the lowered snug. Photography: Building Narratives.

The snug sits lower than the dining floor. A cushioned bench occupies the narrow space behind the shelves, with a wall light close to one end. The floor level, shelving and seat together make it feel like somewhere to settle, rather than spare space at the edge of the dining room.

Overhead, exposed timbers and a large rooflight give the dining area a different scale. There is room to look up and out, while the snug offers the opposite pleasure: a smaller place beside the activity. Someone sitting here can remain part of the room without occupying a dining chair. Across the opened ground floor, cooking, eating and sitting each have a recognisable place.

The house still has a separate sitting room, organised around its fireplace rather than the kitchen. There is somewhere to gather away from the table and worktops, within the proportions of the old house. A bay window and deep cornice frame the room, and the fireplace gives the furniture something to face.

The shutters stand open, while light curtains cover the lower glass. A timber armchair leaves much of the bay visible, and the sofa sits along the side of the room. The owners wanted their mid-century furniture to sit comfortably with the house’s older character; this room shows how little those two things need to compete.

Shutters, cornice and fireplace give the sitting room its frame. Photography: Building Narratives.

The broad stripes of the rug run beneath the finer stripes of the footstool. Their different scales keep the pairing lively, while the sofa’s plain upholstery gives the eye a rest. The furniture is comfortable in the old room without dressing up as Victorian furniture.

A large mirror above the fireplace catches the window, and a low timber cabinet stops well short of the cornice. That spare wall above it matters: the room’s height stays legible instead of disappearing behind storage. The architectural detail can be enjoyed without every surface carrying another decorative statement.

Seen from the garden, the house is still recognisably a tall brick terrace. The new dining-room glazing sits below older sash windows and a planted terrace; a dormer rises above the brickwork. Slender dark window frames keep the ground-floor opening light against the irregular brick surface. The long view from the kitchen ends here, in the outdoor space beyond the dining table.

The rear elevation combines tall sash windows, garden glazing and a dormer. Photography: Building Narratives.

Making that outdoor space more generous involved subtraction as well as building. Two garages and an earlier extension were removed, and a timber-clad garden room added with a sauna and outdoor shower. Inside, the architects coordinated new services while the clients remained on site. The apparently settled house is the result of work that reached from the garden to the roof.

Architecture for London says Camden confirmed the merger of the flats with a certificate of lawfulness, while external alterations to this conservation-area house required planning consent. The certificate covered the merger, not every part of the wider renovation. Building-regulations approval is a separate matter.

Upstairs, the former maisonette no longer had to accommodate a complete home of its own. The first-floor kitchen became a laundry and shower room, taking on the practical tasks of washing while cooking joined the shared spaces below. A familiar room had a new job within the enlarged house.

On the second floor, relocating the stair made space for the main bedroom. The route between floors was itself part of the reorganisation, alongside the rooms it served. Replacing the roof then added two further bedrooms and a family bathroom. The house gained sleeping space both by rearranging an existing floor and by building above it.

In the rear loft bedroom, a broad dormer gives one of those new rooms a purpose beyond sleeping.

A long craft table occupies the broad dormer window. Photography: Building Narratives.

Beneath the window, a long pink-topped craft table stands on trestles. A yellow stool tucks underneath; a task lamp reaches across one end. Pots, pens and little trays are spread along the surface, with room between them to work. The bed remains a bed, with a separate place for making things beside it.

The tabletop carries the useful part of the room right up to the daylight. After the kitchen move, the altered stair and the new roof, it is this small domestic scene that makes the enlarged house feel like a home: a stool to pull up, a lamp to switch on, a stretch of pink tabletop ready for an ordinary afternoon.