New Year, New Project

First post of 2017 and so far the new year has been pretty eventful on the home front. Our next project on the decorating front was always going to be my office, or the room between the front lounge and the morning room if you want the exact location.

When we moved in 14 months ago the room was memorable due to the colour, we think it was a children's play room in a former life and was painted a very bright blue. The walls also had a very curious feel to it and that turned out to be a layer of thin polystyrene under the wallpaper. We thought this was used back in the day to cover up a uneven surface and feared the worse when we began scraping the paper off. To our surprise the walls were pretty good and maybe the foam was used to keep the room warm?

Anyway we scraped all of the paper off, including the ceiling and promptly rang the Plasterer to give us a quote. I had decided to paper two walls and paint the others so needed a fresh start, so to speak.

Something else I had wanted to do was reinstate a fireplace, all of the chimneys had been removed a few years ago and the fireplace in the 'office' had been covered up. Originally i wanted to just open up a hole big enough for a new insert to fit and then buy a surround and fit a new hearth.

This simple task soon began to grow as the plaster began to fall off in big chunks. It wasn't long before 'Plan B' came into force and it was decided to open up the whole fireplace. 'Plan C' quickly followed once we had a word with the Builder. Overnight we had toyed with the idea of removing all of the plaster from the chimney breast and leave the exposed brickwork as it was and the expert agreed the wall was in good enough condition to do just that.

We now have the job of repointing the bricks and making it look as good as we can, I think it will be much better than the original idea. It might even turn out to be the cheapest option, we have no insert, surround or hearth to buy which was about £800 for the lounge. Instead we have just a hearth to sort out and then something (yet to be decided) to stick in the hole.

If money was no object the chimney would be back on the roof and a nice log burner installed, but it is and it wont be happening anytime soon.

The hearth has been sorted already, we paid a trip to Ribble Reclamation in Preston. Amazing place that was featured on TV a few years ago, full of all sorts of old stuff and boat loads of Slabs or as they say up here - Flags. We sorted out a few Yorkshire Stone flags and they will be cut to size and fitted once the plastering has been done. We need to cut the wooden floor but it will great when its done I reckon.

This week I will get the room ready for the workmen who start next Monday. We need to shift a big radiator and chop one or two old electric points out of the wall.

We have sourced the wallpaper and the paint so its all scarily very well organised. In a couple of weeks time we will hopefully be up to out eyeballs in masking tape, sandpaper and paint brushes.

One big decision yet to be made is what we do about the old sofa that sits in my office, it's used almost exclusively by Frankie the Romanian. Almost as soon as he arrived he bagged it as his bed and i'm not sure how to break the news that his favourite piece of furniture is earmarked for the tip.

Whatever comes in its place will have to be big enough for a rather large Black and Tan I reckon!