This first picture shows the room that we have changed from a downstairs bedroom into a new dining room. On the left was a blank wall and is now a large window overlooking our bank of heathers that run along the edge of Drake's Leat. The new wooden floor runs right through the downstairs area with the exception of our master bedroom and the bathrooms. The small settee expands into a bed so that we can still use this room as an extra bedroom if necessary. The quilt with the turtle on the couch is one we brought back from our last visit to Kauai and the wall hanging quilt is made by the Amish and was purchase a couple of years ago from an exhibition of their work held in Austin.
The second picture shows the new bathroom associated with the new dining room and is taken from inside the shower! I was hoping that you might see the shower reflected in the mirror but that was not to be. The vanity unit, the basin, the taps, the towel ring and most of the accessories on the basin were all bought and brought back from Texas over a period of a year. When we first started this project we knew that we would need a "family bathroom" for the house, one that visitors could use without going to the small cloakroom just outside our back door and knowing that one day future buyers might need an extra bedroom with en-suite we decided to add the shower unit. We did all the tiling ourselves and the laying of the laminate floor, the shower unit and base came from Trago Mills.
On the left is just a glimpse of our master bedroom which is virtually unchanged except for the swing doors that lead into the new master bathroom. You can see these virtually in the middle of the picture to the right of the bedside lamp. Incidentally the hanging quilt is another one that we bought at the Amish exhibition and the bedspread, pillows etc came from one of the many shopping expeditions in Austin where I think that we looked at every "bed in a bag" in Sears, Bed, Bath and Beyond and Garden Ridge.The master bathroom itself is huge and as you can see also contains a matching vanity unit, this time with a double basin.
The highlight for us is the round stained glass window that you can see reflected in the mirror. When the sun shines this brings beautiful colours flooding into bathroom which are reflected not only by the mirror but also by the curved surfaces of the shower unit that is directly opposite it. The row of lights above the mirror were an attempt to replicate the lights that are in our daughter's bathrooms in Austin. Our only complaint with this room is that the shaver socket is not energised unless those lights are lit so if you just want to use it for charging a razor or toothbrush then you have to have the lights on all day - 'Elf n Safety rules suck sometimes.....
The highlight for us is the round stained glass window that you can see reflected in the mirror. When the sun shines this brings beautiful colours flooding into bathroom which are reflected not only by the mirror but also by the curved surfaces of the shower unit that is directly opposite it. The row of lights above the mirror were an attempt to replicate the lights that are in our daughter's bathrooms in Austin. Our only complaint with this room is that the shaver socket is not energised unless those lights are lit so if you just want to use it for charging a razor or toothbrush then you have to have the lights on all day - 'Elf n Safety rules suck sometimes.....
While we are still downstairs we move to the new study, which once upon a time was the only bathroom in the house. We were able to reuse most of the shelving, cupboards and desks from the old study but we did get our workmen to re-plaster all the walls and ceilings and we had new bigger windows fitted, I treated myself to a decent leather faced swivel chair, courtesy of Tesco Direct, and now the office is home to one desktop and one laptop - with a spare desktop in the attic.... I do spend quite a lot of time in this room but as it overlooks the heathers, the leat and the golf course it has great views. We have yet to fill in the partitions above the wall studding that separate the study from the kitchen - possibly another stained glass job - so the study is great for eavesdropping on what is going on in the kitchen.
You can actually see those wall partitions in the picture on the right above the new big Welsh Dresser. At the moment Hilary has filled them with some stone pottery jugs and they actually look quite nice there but we are still talking about filling in each of the gaps with stained glass reproductions of the side of the bath hippo scene that Beccy painted for me a long time ago for my birthday. The large black object on the left of the picture is our fridge/freezer that we bought just before Christmas 2006 when we knew that we were to be invaded by our American family who would require ice on demand!
Next to the fridge is the new range cooker that replaces the tower unit that has been our pride and joy for many, many years. It wasn't until the kitchen was virtually finished that we realised the tower unit looked out of place next to the fridge, so we decided to change the cooker for a cream one, have new wooden worktops to match the new wooden floor and to add a small cupboard to the right of the cooker to hold the Calor Gas bottle powering the hobs. We also ended up buying a new microwave oven to replace the one loaned to us by the builders after they wrecked our old one - see previous posts for that little saga!
We move from the kitchen, through the newly constructed archway into the main living area part of which is shown on the right hand side. This is little changed in layout from earlier with the exception of the new wooden floor and of course the archway itself. In this picture the archway is hidden by the grandfather clock but you can see it in the next picture which is looking from the couch/TV end of the room back towards the dining room and the master bedroom.
If you look carefully at the picture on the left you will be able to see the Welsh Dresser in the kitchen, the light on in the study and at the far left hand corner the banister for the stairs which lead to the new extended bedroom and the new guest bathroom. We have yet to decide what to put on the wall over the mantelpiece above the fire and we would really like an original piece of artwork but we have yet to find one that complements the wall colouring that we chose - well Sam chose it actually and Hilary went along with it....
On the right is a rather skew whiff picture of the new bedroom that we were able to fit in after we decided to change the roof line of the house from hip end to gable end. It is wider than it looks in this picture and has a nice double bed - our old one actually as we decided that it was time our old bones needed new mattresses - and of course new bed coverings courtesy of one of the many shops that we visited in Austin. Most of the furniture such as the bedside tables, the wardrobe and the bedside chair are "second user" from the local YMCA charity shop or Tavistock Pannier market.
The final picture is the other upstairs bedroom, just about the only room in the house that wasn't changed at all by our new extension. It does have a nice new hidden cupboard that once contained the hot water tank and is now home to all kinds of linens and things and if you go out of the door in the centre of the picture you will see in front of you the door for the new bedroom, to the left another new linen cupboard and to the right is the guest bathroom complete with bath, shower over and loo. There seems to be little point in publishing a picture of this new bathroom, nice as it is, because all you can see is yet another American vanity unit, a big window and a loo.
So that is that, our project and this blog is now complete, it has been an interesting exercise, slightly more expensive than our original projections but those did not include doing the floors and the kitchen updates. If you took the time line from the first date that we contacted an architect then it has all taken just over 12 months with a core building time of 4 months. We now have a home that should last us well into our old age that is reasonably easy to maintain as we have tried to keep external painting down to a minimum. We can live downstairs if we need to and we have lots of space and plenty of bathrooms to deal with the influx of guests. Why not come over and see us sometime?
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