The downstairs floor is gone thank goodness. It actually wasn’t as bad as we thought, as a lot of it was compacted clay rather than poured concrete which would have been a total pain to remove, but clearing it still took a week with a jack hammer and wheel-barrow, so thank you builders.

Now the floor is gone we’ve knocked out space for the 2 sets of double pocket doors which will lead off the entrance hall – right into the reception room, and left into the kitchen diner. Initially the hall felt small and claustrophobic, but now with both sides of it almost completely open it feels so much more spacious. The photo is taken standing in what will be the reception room (and bar!) and looking through both sets of pocket doors to the new kitchen diner. It feels fab, and you can just tell how much light will fill it once the aluminium sliding doors are in (rather than in their current state which is boarded over!)

More light is also entering the hall from the newly created back door, which you can see to the rear and side of the stairs in the next pic. Previously this space didn’t exist, it’s the new boot room we’ve built at the back of the house, and it really adds to the sense of scale you get in the entrance hall.

An upshot of opening up the entrance area, is that suddenly I have changed my mind on removing the ceiling above the hall to create the planned void. I love double height entrance halls, they make a house feel so spacious and grand, but they obviously cannibalise space from the upstairs. In this house the space above the hall was a bathroom, which I’d already mentally waved goodbye to as we’ve carved 2 new bathrooms out of a bedroom, but on my last visit I walked upstairs to see the bathroom above the hall gone, and in its wake just an open space framing a window. It immediately said landing, artwork, console table, lamps, so I told the boys on site to put the sledgehammer down, put a quick call into the foreman, and now I have an upstairs landing.