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Ok, I know that this has been done, and done , and done.... and is possibly ‘over done’ now; trite even. But this is “just because I can” post. I was hoping someone would teach me how to do this one day, but no. I learned all by myself! I am so totally chuffed with myself!
Now, pat me on the back and get on with your surfing. (oh yeah, and tell me how beautiful my daughter is… Thank you)
When we bought the house there were some things that I love about it, and some I hated. The stairwell, bless it, contained elements of both. I love the sweeping turn of the stairs, the view of the river out the stairwell window and the turret like way the stairs were attached to the back of the house, not taking up room in living area of the house. But I HATED the artexed plasterboard that I knew was covering an old, curved, stone wall. We made a test hole and sure enough… we struck stone!
I knew the stone wall was lurking behind the gaustly, early 80’s artex because our house (before Belgium) was exactly 1 mile up the road from where we are now and had an almost identical stairwell with lovely exposed stone work. In our previous house, the stone had been completely repointed and exposed. Here we exposed the stone, had it roughly repointed, but we are going to limewash the the wall instead of leaving it bare. My hope is we will have a feature that is more in keeping with the period of the house but the limewash will let the wall breathe while brightening the stairwell and making it feel less cold. Once the limewashing is finished we will decide how to dress the stairs.
Today:
When there are gaps in my blogging, there are usually good reasons for it. Then, I’m never quiet sure where to jump back in. So I’ve decided to let you see what we’ve been up to.
Set on the ‘old’ bridge over the Avon Water, this is our new house.
Built sometime in 1600’s or 1700’s then rebuilt in early 1800’s due to fire. It was originally a wollen mill. There is a lade (mill-race) that runs under the house and behind the hedge you see on the right of this photo. The mill wheel was housed in, what is now, my kitchen but It has not been used as a mill for many, many years. When we bought the house last year, it was a 4 bedroom house. We have successfully renovated it into the current state of a 3 bedroom house… yes, I know, a little backwards considering we have 4 kids.
The door, with my sister standing in it, is the back door, but also the only door into the house.
Since October 2007 we have been renovating the inside. There was one bedroom on the groundfloor and 3 bedrooms (2 full bathrooms) on the first floor. We took the downstairs bedroom along with the bathroom and some cupboard space and made a larger kitchen/dining area. the window for the new kitchen is located on the right of this picture just above the hedge/lade.
The room to the left of the door was the old kitchen. We are in the process of turning it into a ‘mud/laundry room’. We have made a new access/doorway into this room which meant breaking through a 20” thick, stone wall. We will be adding a cloak area and a WC to this room.
Upstairs has only been redecorated by us, but we are applying for planning permission to make another 2 bedrooms in the loft area. (see? there is method in my madness!)
We have done other work in the house, like reopening the fireplace and plastering over old artex, and exposing the stone on the spiral stairwell to try and bring back some of the original features of the house.
So, do you want to see more pictures?
