The ultimate renovation: how two designers extended their £50k London flat into a 'magical' family home - now worth £1.95 million

Put two quirky designers together and the one thing you won’t get is bland — especially when they’ve spent 10 years transforming their home in Queen’s Park, NW6. The extraordinary result belongs to the McLeods: creative director Lyndsay, architect Duncan and toddler Oban — who’s already busy designing a cardboard-box racing car.

Lyndsay, 51, who studied theatre design in Nottingham, moved to London and rented in Queen’s Park before buying the flat above an old Liptons grocers in 1994. “The only access upstairs was a spiral staircase from the shop,” she says. Though damp, with rot in parts, it had good light and a good feel and she loved it from the start. When she and Duncan, 43, got together in 2004, he moved in.

Their 10-year project ensued, first getting rid of the spiral and making a normal stair in a small extension at the back, and adding the top roof terrace. In 2010, Duncan started his architecture practice and needed office space, so they created an office in the garden, and continued to work on the rest of the house.

“For the first phase, it was just us, ripping up floorboards and knocking out fireplaces. For the second we used real builders,” Duncan explains. One Christmas the couple bought each other half a huge girder. They excavated the backyard themselves, digging round the clock with spades by floodlight.

That would end some relationships, but this couple relish working with their hands. “We’d discuss and sketch ideas all the time, then Duncan would do the technical drawings,” Lyndsay says.

Under the old floorboards they found Twenties sweet wrappers and desiccated mice. In the shop downstairs, part of which they now rent out, Duncan found original black-and-white wall tiles, which they kept. The first thing that strikes you at this former Victorian flat-over-a-shop is a shimmering, pearl grey-plastered hall. The second is a steel staircase springing up one side, apparently carpeted with grass, as if the White Rabbit might hurtle down at any moment.

Duncan presses a button that releases a powerful magnet holding the stairway in place. Then, effortlessly, he slides the whole thing sideways and a fabulous Ducati motorbike appears. He teaches Superbike, and likes to keep his wheels indoors. “Lyndsay said okay, as long as she couldn’t see it.”

At the back of the hall, a pocket door slips away to reveal Duncan’s architecture studio. It looks like a giant upturned rowing boat with curved slatted wooden sides, natural light filtering in from above a suspended ceiling.

This high space houses his practice, and sits where the walled garden once was — but if you take the back stairs and look out on it, all you see is a grassed roof terrace with glass sides. No one would believe that busy architects are beavering away below. This grass is imitation, too.

The first-floor living room is equally clever. To the rear the couple designed a kitchen island using an old bronze display vitrine and bespoke joinery, with a black walnut top. Parts slide in and out for storage.

The whole panelled wall beside the kitchen area glides back to reveal a coffee-making shelf, then the larder, and finally the glass and china department. “We love Victorian mystery and magic,” Duncan says. They wanted more storage than they could possibly need, but didn’t want to see things all the time. Hence the sliding doors.

Levelled and scrubbed original floorboards run throughout, robust enough to withstand Oban’s burgeoning racing career, set off by beautifully muted paint colours and a fireplace Duncan designed.

This relaxed space resembles the sort of trendy bar you can never actually find. Lyndsay’s background, first in theatre design, later as chief designer for Donna Karan, doing shops and displays, is evident. “I always add a twist,” she says. Her choice of colour, often bespoke, is subtle and bang-on, done in eco-paint.

The couple recycle inventively, too. In the bedrooms and bathroom above, an old French rolltop tub, one of Lyndsay’s first buys, was winched in through a window. In one bedroom a run of bog-standard Ikea carcasses fronted with solid Victorian doors make wardrobes. It’s another ingenious idea. There’s even a tiny roof terrace up here, accessed through a window via steps like giant building blocks.

This home is a perfect test bed for such ideas. “We like our clients to be as selfish and bold as possible,” Duncan says. “My job is to make it happen. We’re not good at saying no.” He laughs as he says that six years here were spent on DIY.

Oban’s birth in 2015, after years of sometimes heartbreaking IVF, makes this wonder-world project doubly worthwhile. Without doubt, it’s a joyful place for any right-thinking adult — but for a child it is pure magic.

DO THE MATHS

Two-storey, 1,400sq ft flat with 470sq ft garden bought by Lyndsay in 1994: £50,000

Shop below bought a few years later: £30,000

Cost of work over 10 years, much DIY, no fees: about £275,000

Value now of 2,100sq ft home with three outside areas covering 600sq ft: £1.95 million (estimate)

GET THE LOOK