A creative floor plan

Shemchuk and his wife, interior designer Kathy Farley, had outgrown their small studio home. He took one look at the two houses for sale on the same property and connected the dots: "The bones were there. All we had to do was put them together."

To the delight of neighbors, who wrote letters in support of the project, the remodel is low, unobtrusive, and in scale with the rest of the homes on the narrow street.

The combined house is still modest in size at 1,760 square feet.