A religious conversion

Despite living in a church, there's nothing remotely Gothy about clean-cut furniture retailer Rowen Meehan. 'I love church developments as they're so much roomier than most conversions. And you don't have to do the whole ecclesiastical chic thing,' he says. In spite of his obvious fetish for churches - he's also lived in one in Tufnell Park - he admits that, without careful handling, they can be gloomy, oppressive spaces. The main challenge he faced was creating a space that was more luminous than lugubrious. Now the home he moved into two years ago is unrecognisable: a predominantly white space filled with funky, clean-lined red and white furniture. The music on his stereo? Hip, hip hop rather than The Cure.

Fortunately, the developer behind the conversion had already sandblasted many of the original features - a huge, theatrical column, exposed brickwork in the open-plan living room and rafters in the bedroom upstairs - removing grime and restoring them to their original, pristine, paler condition. This instantly made the place airier, which Meehan capitalised on by painting walls and ceilings - including a spectacularly high one in the living area - white. The developer had already dug 2ft into the ground to lower the floor level, thereby creating an even greater ceiling height. (The living area's grand, imposing column now stands on a plinth, the top of which indicates the original ground level.)

Does Meehan get spooked out by the thought that, while padding around his bijou residence, he could be walking or (even worse) dancing on people's graves? 'No, nobody had been buried in this church and it doesn't have a graveyard,' he assures me.

Meehan set up RJM Furniture a year ago, with business partner Ian Clarke, selling 'top-end European design'. 'I'd sensed there was a dearth of good-quality design in North London, that Hampstead and Belsize Park folk hankered after contemporary design but had nowhere to go.' His hunch proved right. Located on the up-and-coming Kentish Town Road, the showroom stocks swish furniture by hot Italian and German manufacturers, including Magis, Zanotta and Vitra. 'It's a destination shop, really. I chose the location because the rent there is low, which allows the prices of the stock to be more reasonable.'

Meehan's personal style mixes Sixties space-age chic - epitomised by his white and silver Bombo dining chairs and arching chrome Arco light - and Seventies penthouse glamour: take his cream sheepskin rugs and coffee table with a high-gloss ebony veneer sporting tigerskin-graphic stripes. His criteria for picking pieces for home? 'Furniture that's neither overdesigned nor blandly minimalist. And it has to be very comfortable.'

What makes his home unique is the contrast between all this modern furniture and the original features, the stained-glass windows and a brick archwork which dramatically frames his bed. Meehan also installed an oak banister 'in keeping with the churchy elements'.

Looking around his gaff, it's not hard to spot his obsessions. First off, his passion for red - the colour of a Tom Dixon Jack light and an ultra-elegant L-shaped, low-level sofa by Zanotta. 'I specially chose one that hugged the ground in order to emphasise the ceiling height.' His living room, incidentally, is big enough for a sizeable crimson pouffe by Baleri Italia to be used as a doorstop. His other weakness is pool - hence his pool table, which he had custom-made with scarlet baize.

But, fundamentally, Meehan is a design-mad aesthete. Of a Sunday, he loves eyeing up swellegant retro pieces in the second-hand furniture shops in Camden Stables (a recent find was a pair of chunky Sixties table lighters). In his home, he's considered both the colour scheme and interplay of different geometric shapes: 'I chose the circular shapes of the Arco lamp's shade and my round CD racks to break up the severe rectilinear shapes typical of a lot of contemporary design.' And he's a fount of information on the latest trends: 'High-gloss laminates are all the rage now. And colour is very big - people are going off greys.' But then any-colour-as-long-as-it's-red Meehan would say that, wouldn't he?

RJM Furniture, 203 Kentish Town Road, NW5 (020 7428 9761)