How I squeezed an extra bedroom into my one-bedroom flat

Rebecca Nokes: ‘It’s taken blood, sweat and tears, but the flat is made to my exact specifications, and I have absolutely fallen in love with it’ - Clara Molden for The Daily Telegraph

This cleverly reimagined two-bedroom flat in south London is the sort of place that makes you want to discard the clutter in your life, overhaul your living space and embrace a new life of elegance and serenity. Located on the top floor of a large Victorian building, not far from Wandsworth Common, it is the covetable home of Rebecca Nokes, design director of the kitchen company John Lewis of Hungerford.

“I always wanted to work in interior design,” says Rebecca. “My mother was a very creative person; she worked as a fashion designer, then turned her hand to houses later in life. As a child, I was good at painting and drawing, and I would constantly rearrange my bedroom.” She had long dreamed of her own renovation project, but lacked the funds to overhaul her previous flat in Tulse Hill. It was the Covid-19 lockdowns – which encouraged her to save money – combined with the resulting stamp duty holiday, that finally provided the opportunity she had been waiting for.

Room for improvement

Unlike a typical Victorian terrace, which is long, narrow and difficult to reconfigure, the flat has a more amenable square shape. At 750 square feet, it’s also a relatively generous size, but the layout was all wrong, with the kitchen located away from the dining and sitting area and a thin, lightless bathroom, which Rebecca found depressing.

In the previous layout, Rebecca’s kitchen was isolated from the living areas

The sitting area before the renovation

Spatial planning is second nature to her, thanks to her experience designing kitchens, so it was easy for her to envisage how the flat could work better.

Reimagining the layout

The first step was to remove the dingy bathroom and knock through into the dining and sitting room, to make space for the new kitchen where the bathroom had been. “Originally, I wanted to take down the entire wall, but the structural engineer said no, and actually it is a good thing because it has allowed me to add a utility room, which helps keep the rest of the flat free from clutter,” says Rebecca.

This freed up the existing kitchen, which became a valuable second bedroom. Rebecca then stole one metre from this room and one metre from the main bedroom to create a new, two-metre-wide bathroom. “Bedrooms are usually put next to each other, but having the bathroom between them makes much more sense,” she explains.

Finally, on the other side of the main bedroom, she added a stud wall and created a door-free walk-in wardrobe – a luxurious touch that also helps to keep the bedroom clutter-free.

The kitchen, dining and sitting room

“I always encourage clients to make a couple of design decisions early on,” says Rebecca. In her own flat, this included a big statement splashback in Calacatta marble from Rossi Stone Surfaces, which she liked for its varied colours and dramatic veining, and which she specified with a fluted finish. The natural beauty of the marble is enhanced by its undulating lines, and gives the entire room a beautiful and unusual focal point.

To this, Rebecca has added sleek flat-fronted cabinetry. “The kitchen cabinets needed to look like a piece of furniture or joinery; I didn’t want to feel like I’m in a kitchen when I’m sitting on the sofa,” she says.

For this reason, there are no wall cupboards. “The trade-off is slightly less storage, but as they are only half the depth of floor cupboards, it’s not as much as you might think. By using deep drawers, in which everything is easy to reach, and adding a bar area in the hall, it was possible to go without, and the room feels so much more spacious.”

The Calacatta marble has a textural fluted finish - Clara Molden for The Daily Telegraph

The new kitchen, dining room and sitting room - Clara Molden for The Daily Telegraph

Rebecca particularly recommends deep drawers around the sink: “They are a great hack. You get much more usable storage compared to a cabinet under the sink, which usually ends up full of things you can’t see properly, and lots of wasted space where the sink hangs down.”

Another early decision was the engineered oak flooring, which helps to create the loft-style look Rebecca wanted, and which is paired with limewashed walls. “I knew I wanted to use limewash; it adds so much depth and texture,” she says. As a money-saving exercise, she applied it herself: “It took some experimentation, and when it first goes on, it looks a bit like someone has thrown up on the walls. My partner was horrified.”

Fortunately, once dried, the effect is subtle and sophisticated, and it sets the tone for the decoration throughout the flat, which is neutral and earthy, with lots of textural interest. “The natural light in the flat isn’t amazing, so I’ve kept everything light and bright,” says Rebecca. “I wanted some colour, but nothing really bold. There is a subtle green theme, but the other shades come from flowers and artworks.”

The entrance hall

To bring natural light into the otherwise dark entrance hall, Rebecca replaced the wall that divides the sitting room and hall with Crittall windows. She also brought the backlit panelling that runs behind the L-shaped sofa into the entrance hall, and added shelves for decorative objects, so that it feels like an extension of the living area.

Clever use of Crittall windows helps to add light to the flat, including the coffee station and wine fridge in the hall - Clara Molden for The Daily Telegraph

For that reason, she also installed a bar area in the hall with a coffee station, an integrated wine fridge and a glazed wall cabinet for glasses and mugs. The fluted glass doors of the cabinet echo the splashback in the kitchen, and, as the glass is not completely transparent, “you don’t have to keep everything inside super tidy,” Rebecca notes.

The bar area has the same worktop as the kitchen, but here it is paired with dark green shaker-style cabinet fronts and matt black hardware, which matches the Buster + Punch light switches and door handles.

The bedrooms

The new stud wall in the main bedroom, which separates the walk-in wardrobe from the rest of the room, allowed Rebecca to centre the bed on the window, and have equal spaces on either side for bedside tables. “This is a good way to give a bedroom visual balance, and make it feel ordered and calm,” she explains.

To this, she has added a sense of drama with a headboard upholstered in a moss-green velvet fabric by Rose Uniacke that stretches across the entire wall. A raw-edged timber ledge above gives a surface on which to prop pictures.

Rebecca’s bed is now centrally placed, and has a dramatic upholstered headboard and a raw-edged timber shelf - Clara Molden for The Daily Telegraph

In the small second bedroom, the mood is different. Here, Rebecca has turned its challenging shape to advantage, cladding the walls in weathered boards taken from old pallets to give the look of a cabin.

The bathroom

In the bathroom, a striking basin from Lusso Stone takes centre stage. “It was an investment, but I wanted the bathroom to have one strong feature,” says Rebecca. Space is at a premium, so she opted for a wet room with a walk-in shower.

The tiles were mitred so that they could be applied without a metal trim – a time-consuming job that ate up a large part of the budget for the room, but creates a pleasing, seamless finish. She saved money in other areas, including a cost-effective black-framed shower screen from Victorian Plumbing that mirrors the Crittall windows in the hall.

The takeaway

“I loved renovating this flat, but it was intense,” says Rebecca. “We did a lot of the work ourselves at weekends – it helps that my partner is an electrician and my dad is also very handy, but removing the waste was hell. I definitely wouldn’t do that again.”

She also strongly recommends making a schedule of work when undertaking a renovation project. “Because of my experience planning and installing kitchens, I could always see the end of the project, but it was still anxiety-inducing,” she says.

Along with the hard work and anxiety, it also took a year of her life. But it hasn’t dented her enthusiasm for renovation. “It’s taken blood, sweat and tears, sometimes quite literally, but the flat is made to my exact specifications, and I have absolutely fallen in love with it.”

Recommended

The 10 best home decorating rules top interior experts swear by

Sign up to the Front Page newsletter for free: Your essential guide to the day's agenda from The Telegraph - direct to your inbox seven days a week.