Another piece away

Good afternoon folks.
It's been a little while since my last post I know. We have been getting ready for Christmas as you can imagine. This year is going to be a tale of two Christmases for our family.
Before that though, I thought it was time to pop on and share one of the last space making  jobs.

It's always interesting to try to guess what the original layout was like but we can't quite work out where the original stairs would have been though we know that the current staircase is a relatively new addition. By relatively I mean around forty four years ago.....

This space has been used as a utility area.

And when the staircase was changes this cupboard space under the stairs was created making a small room too.

 Time to say goodbye....

 Though we can't take the whole wall away we can open up the space more.

 It is kind of fun doing this but it is messy work and it doesn't take long before you start to see the difference.

 

 Once everything is cleared away you can see the potential.  The next job is to look at the support for the stairs. The plan is to bring a support beam across from the wall to link up additional support. Then we can remove the secondary supports and we will just have a single beam coming down (The second one in from the right)
The space is going to be used as an office cum library so we'll incorporate the beam into the custom desk area that is planned.
Once everything is boarded and shaped around the stairs it should be an interesting space with the bonus of being a lot brighter too.

Slowly but surely we are ticking jobs off the proverbial list. Even though the list gets longer and longer we still feel like we are making progress which is good. Even better is the fact that we are still excited to bring our vision to life!

Thanks for popping on by and if I don't post again this side of Christmas I wish you and yours all the richness and blessings of the season.
God Bless.

Making space.

Good morning.

This morning's tale takes place in the kitchen so pop the kettle on and let's make some room.
Part of what we've been doing is looking through some of the areas that have been added over time and them deciding whether they are going to still be beneficial to us or whether we can strip them back.
One such area is this inner hallway (on the right) where they took a corner off the kitchen area and had put in a door leading from the lounge and a door leading into the kitchen.

As we could appreciate that it was primarily added to keep warmth in the living space as there is no central heating, double glazing etc we had to consider the impact of removing it versus opening it up and getting rid of the dark lobby.

In the end we decided that we wanted to open the space again.

 Time to get to work.

 Once the basics were removed it was clear to see that it was going to have a big impact on the space visually.

 Looking from the lounge area they had cut the original door frame away in places to add a smaller door so once that is removed it will give a pretty large opening and already it brings a lot more light through.

 Giving the space back to the kitchen has also made a huge difference making the space feel so much more spacious. The other advantage is that the original stone staircase down to the cellar starts in line with the wall making it easier for us to open it up for better access later

Looking down the stairs there is much more light too which is a massive plus point in our book too.
At a later stage, if we feel that we are losing too much heat up the stairs we can put a door in at the bottom. Time will tell though I feel that with the new windows and thermal insulation on the walls and a decent stove the house will be a lot more toasty and it may not be necessary.

One more change done. It is really beginning to feel that we are putting our mark on the place. Slowly but surely giving shape to our vision.....
There are a couple more changes to do. Once they are done we can begin the process of putting everything back together for the first stage of the project...

Have a lovely day folks and I'll be back later in the week, this time in the utility area (which is not going to be a utility room anymore.)

Til then, take care.