The Rooms at the Top of the Stairs

Many of you have asked how the two rooms at the top of the stairs are coming along. And exactly what we are going to do with them. As you may remember the rooms at the top of the stairs used to be one large bedroom but, before we moved in, they had been separated into two smaller rooms and used as children's bedrooms. Our original plan was to remove the wall and return the room to its original size. However, upon rethinking we have realised that the two smaller rooms are of a decent size and so a new plan was hatched...

Left-hand room (to be bedroom) - Farm Mum can be seen standing in the room that will become the bathroom.

The wall was to remain and the left-hand room would become a bedroom, as it was before, and the right-hand room would become the family bathroom. This would save us walking all the way from top left hand corner to bottom right hand corner of the house in the middle of the night for a toilet trip! And also meant that all the bedrooms and bathroom would be at one end of the house with the living areas, and a toilet/shower room, at the other.

However the wall proved to be not sound proof, not sturdy and.. well... bendy. So it had to come down. Then it was discovered that the supports were wonky and would need replacing. So they came down as well and new ones went up to take their place.

The Dividing Wall - one door will continue along the line of the wall towards us and the other will go at right angles, heading to the right

However, it was then discovered that the wall (and the wall of the upstairs airing cupboard) appeared to have been put in before the two door frames had been put in and had been nailed into place. Farm Dad and Farm Guy couldn't get the remainder of the old wall out - so therefore couldn't get a new wall in... so out came the door frames! That was when it was discovered that the wall of the airing cupboard was also many of the same "quality" walling product, so out it came as well!

That was us ready to continue... until it was noticed that the two doors didn't match in either height or width so now was the perfect time to change them and make them match! So now the doors were missing, and have no replacement as yet, and the wall had no ummm... wall! And the airing cupboard was open into the "bathroom" with all my towels etc piled up on the landing behind - cats now have a great bed - sigh!

So our two rooms are only two by the separating grid (as modelled by farm mum) and have no doors any more. The airing cupboard is now "easy access" and all existing walls (and the ones to be put up) need to be plastered. Oh and yeah, several floorboards are broken so they need to be replaced; and soon as the cats think access to the underside of the floor is great fun!!!

But all that said it is looking good. It is so great to see the whole thing coming together and knowing that by the end we will have something to be proud of, something we can stand back and say "We made that!". This is definitely why we bought this place, so we could make our own mark on it!

PS. The "bathroom" window has no wooden surround anymore (dry rot and woodworm) so it is bare bricks all around apart from one spot where the brick has fallen away and so there's a hole to the outside wall..

"I'm fixin' a hole, where the rain gets in. To stop my mind from wandering....."