4 bed semi-detached house for sale

Russell Gardens, Whetstone N20

Russell Gardens is one of those quiet Whetstone cul-de-sacs where the traffic never really finds you, and the day here tends to start in the kitchen. It is the warmest room in the house, which carries the morning: Breakfast made, lunches packed, the dog fed and let out before the school run. The kitchen was refitted in recent years, and it earns its place as the centre of things.

From there the house opens out rather than boxes you in. The dining room at the front is where this family actually eats, together on weeknights and with friends at the weekend, around a table that seats twelve without anyone breathing in. A separate living room takes the morning light and comes into its own in the evening, the room everyone drifts to after dinner for a film. Off the dining room sits a further room the current owners have kept deliberately flexible: A quiet study one day, a snug the next, a spare room when guests stay over. It is the kind of space a family grows into rather than out of. Tri-fold doors have replaced the old sliders, so in the warmer months the ground floor and the garden read as one space.

And the garden is the reason a lot of people will fall for this house. It feels less like a London garden and more like somewhere further out, private on every side, with nothing looking down on you and the nearest house a good twenty metres back. Pleached trees and a living hedge do the screening, and on a still day the loudest thing is the leaves. The owners bought extra depth from the neighbour some years ago, which is why it runs deeper than the street would suggest, and the sunniest stretch, along the side, is where the wooden chairs live. Mornings are for coffee at the patio table; evenings are for the rocking chairs facing the lawn. The barbecue is wired for power, so a slow Sunday rotisserie is a fixture from spring onwards, and the dog has the run of all of it.

Out in the garden, fully detached from the house, is a separate home office that has quietly become where the working day happens. Being properly apart is the point: Work stays out there and home stays in here, and with a flexible room indoors as well, there is more than one way to carve out space when you need it. Sky broadband holds strong across the plot, so calls run without drama, and the office has its own heating and cooling to see it through the year.

Upstairs there are four bedrooms. The main bedroom is the pick, generous and full of morning light, while one of the others is used as a reading room and guest room, tucked at the quiet back of the house. The family bathroom serves the floor, and downstairs a second bathroom off the hall takes the pressure out of the morning routine; just as usefully, it means older relatives and visitors are never sent up the stairs.

The house has been looked after properly rather than dressed up. Around ten years ago it was taken back and brought up to date, with new floors, pipework rerun through the walls, and proper damp treatment, including a weatherproof coat across the front that sheds the rain. Heating is gas central heating on radiators, each adjustable on its own, so you can warm the rooms you are using. Water pressure is good throughout. Parking is free on the street in this quiet cul-de-sac, and while no charger is fitted, the option is there.

For a family, the setting does a lot of quiet work. Two primary schools sit within walking distance, and the secondary is around ten minutes away in Finchley, with more schooling near North Finchley a short drive further on. Totteridge & Whetstone on the Northern line, and Oakleigh Park for the fast run into the City, put central London within easy reach. The High Street and its coffee are about fifteen minutes on foot, and the parks are the part of it you end up using most: Friary Park, Oakhill Park, and Jack's Lake a little further, all good for a dog and a clear head.

Ask the owners what they will miss and the list runs long: The garden they built, the calm of the cul-de-sac, the living hedge they share with next door at number four, and the sheer space of a house that turned out bigger, inside and out, than the street lets on. Mostly, though, they will miss what it all added up to: A house that became a home