Remodelling the bedroom

After spending a lot of time scribbling layouts on bits paper; it wasn't until a few of the new additions to the rooms (electrics etc) had started to go in that we got a sense of what the spaces were going to look and feel like. The one room that has had the most changes has been the master bedroom. As we are at a stage with the house where we can make major disruptive changes and look at future-proofing it for other eventualities, we spent a lot of time talking about how the room worked with the rest of the house. Because this is going to be our our 'sanctuary space' from all things work and business, we decided to put a few more things in place to allow it to have that feel. 

We have borrowed a bit more space from the main corridor to enable a new lobby like entrance in the main room, making the room feel more spacious:

We have installed an en-suite, borrowing the doorway from the old toilet door in the bathroom: 

As the en-suite will be quite a dark space we got Jim to introduce a new window opening, that is now very in keeping with the rest of the external look of the property:

In the main quarters of the room, we have established two new openings:

On the left is an opening to a walk in wardrobe and the right is the new lobby into the room:

That's most of the major work done in this room now, some plastering to do then it's all ready for second fix plumbing and electrics

Off with the roof, down with the wall, up with the floor...

There's been loads happening with the kitchen recently. Now that the opening is all secure from the old chimney - things have really started to progress with the new part. 

It looks a little bit scary to begin with:

especially when viewed from above - eeeek! proper destruction:

But before long there are foundations going in:

Flooring laid:

A wall emerging:

Stone cladding on the surface:

And all the openings being made good:

It's great seeing the place come back together again! The oak should be arriving for the new roof trusses next week so I will update again when there has been a bit more progress there.

Creating the Kitchen

The guys have been hard at work making good of the gable end, now that the chimney is down. The speed at which it has been happening has been quite astonishing too! After only two days we went from oil tarred stonework to this:

The bedding in looks great:

And if you hadn't known there'd been a chimney there 

I don't think you could tell now by looking!

The steels are in to support the weight of the wall:

And the block work has gone in to stabilise the new roof:

The tiles from the old utility roof have come down:

And the opening from the inside looks fantastic:

They've also been hard at it digging up the floor ready for insulation and heating. We weren't too sure what there would be under the suspect lino, but there were some fantastic flagstones waiting for us:

They need a bit of a clean up but we think they will look just great in the new conservatory 

(in a few years time....)

The salvage yard is filling up quite nicely now:

And it's great to see mother nature still making her mark in amongst all the chaos too:

Breaking On Through

One of the things we had talked about doing with the house was creating an opening from the courtyard wall at the back into the walled/kitchen garden. As the new kitchen will open up into the courtyard it made sense to have this connection. This wasn't a necessity of course and just something we had put onto our ever growing 'to do' list. But, after a lengthy discussion with both the electricity board and our pump engineer it became more urgent as we needed to get some pipe work directed through the wall. 

So, we started off by marking out the position of the 'hole':

I started to remove a few of the first stones with a pick axe and crowbar: 

After struggling with the digging out of a trench (we had no shovel) Mike came back to the wall and started removing a few of the larger stones:

It soon became obvious this was a one man job, so I went back up to the room we had been working on before and took the remaining plaster off the future ensuite walls:

It meant I had a good view of Mike working his way through the wall... 

The lump hammer came out, and some makeshift props:

 Then we were through! Yipee!: 

The place is starting to look like a proper building site now:

Some useful stones for future projects:

 And perhaps a lintel would be good to save the rest of the wall from tippling in!

An impressive start though - we should be able to get going with the rest of the trench now