This Resi project involved extending and renovating the ground floor of a 1930s home in North London. Homeowner Natasha bought the property with her husband 25 years ago, but realised as her family grew that the home was no longer meeting their needs. Looking for ways to create more space for their family of five, they enlisted Resi to explore potential design solutions.

We've lived in this house for 25 years - we were young when we bought the place and have had three kids since, now aged 11, 10 and 9. We've changed it as we've gone along; we extended upwards into the loft first. The downstairs layout consisted of three separate rooms, a living room at the front of the property, a much smaller kitchen and an old lean-to conservatory. And we basically ran out of space! The kitchen was so small that, at one point, we had to have a freezer outside because there wasn't enough storage space. We had outgrown the house - it felt dark and didn't flow. We spoke about doing the project for a while, and once we had saved up the money we felt ready to rock and roll.

We chose to improve rather than move as we absolutely love the house. We have really lovely neighbours, the kids are settled at their school and my husband and I both grew up a stone's throw away. We wanted to put some love into it, and it's been such a transformation for our family life. There's been a huge change in dynamic for us and our kids having done the project; we love being at home now, which wasn't really the case before.

Working with Resi was a great experience, all the steps were clear and we felt very guided through the process. When you do these builds, you don’t know what you're doing - from the planning applications to everything else that needs to get done, so having everything in one place on the portal meant that we didn’t have to constantly go hunting for information. We used the messaging feature a lot when we had questions, and the team were very responsive. And our designer, Ines, came up with a fantastic design and listened to us when we wanted to change things. We love the way the space flows, and we're so glad we listened to her.

The build itself took around 16 weeks - we used a Resi builder, and they were fantastic. They were really precise, had great communication, turned up when they said they would and involved us in every decision made, no matter how small. It's nerve-wracking when choosing a builder, and we had no complaints - it was a pleasure having them here!

Photography by Peter Furlong.