From Stables To House: #3 Stairs & An Exciting Delivery

Good Day Everyone,

We have stairs!!! I recently came back onsite after over a week at my parents to find that our staircase had been installed. This is very exciting indeed! I have not been upstairs for such a long time that I'd actually forgotten what it looked like. As well as stairs, we also had a very exciting delivery. Our cast iron radiators arrived. We took a bit of a gamble on these as we ordered them online without seeing them in person first, but the gamble paid off. These are absolutely stunning - I love them :o). The intention had always been to go for matte black cast iron radiators... until we saw these. We loved how these had a modern twist and we also like the different colours and how they change depending upon the lighting.

Cast Iron Radiator

A closer look (please excuse the dust)

In the above vlog, I take you upstairs and show you how we have split the upper floor. Historically, the upstairs was split into two rooms - one very large open room with a dividing wall and door that led to the smaller room with cupboards and a kitchenette. Each room had it's own staircase.

The old larger room with it's own staircase

Door way from large room into smaller room

Old small room had cupboards & a kitchenette

Old small room had it's own staircase too

The upstairs space is very rectangular and when it came to rejigging the layout we had to work around the existing windows. We were not allowed to change the position of the existing windows nor could we install any new window openings. So we decided that the best way to maximise the space would be to remove both staircases at either end of the rectangular space, and install one that was slightly more to the centre. This way when you go upstairs you could have rooms coming off to either side of the landing as well as in front - it makes sense when you look at the photos below of the new layout :o).

Reworking the space allowed us to create a master bedroom with an ensuite wet room, a family bathroom and two further bedrooms. We were allowed to install skylights into some of the rooms with no/very small windows as they do not change the overall silhouette of the building, thus adhering to the conservation restrictions. The whole of the upper floor is built into the roof space. This means that every room has sloping ceilings, making the rooms feel quite cottage like.

The new layout

The new layout

Originally, we intended to have painted floorboards in the bedrooms and landing, however, most of the floorboards turned out to be very rotten. Not surprising given that the building is over 130 years old. In the end, we managed to salvage about 25% of the floorboards. As our floorboards are so old, they're a different size and thickness to what's currently available on the market. After ringing around a few reclamation yards we got lucky and found some that matched our existing ones. The reclaimed floorboards are from an old hospital, and aside from being dirty, they are in immaculate condition. There are no holes or nails in them whatsoever. In fact, hubby cleaned and sanded a small part of one and the wood looked so good that we have decided to sand and oil them, instead of painting them. Don't you just love it when things work out differently but better?!

I hope you enjoyed this little update on our renovation project.

Love Sheen xxx