WEEKS 4–5
Bringing down the entire ceiling
We’re through! The old outside wall of the house is down. The kitchen extension is starting to take shape
Part of the kitchen ceiling has gone too. That is my bedroom door above my builders head!
The vertical steel is part of the big metal frame now holding up the house
The kitchen extension is the biggest part of this project. The old kitchen wall was a supporting wall so removing it is a large chunk of the cost of the kitchen extension. Structurally it is also the hardest thing to remove but it has finally gone. In its place we now have 2 rectangular steel frames. The big vertical metal post you can see is the leg of the biggest frame and it supports the two floors above it. It’s where the old chimney breast was and I plan to re-instate a fire later down the line, although it’s hard to see anything but rubble right now
As well as the massive supporting wall disappearing, part of the kitchen ceiling has gone too, a victim of my stipulation that nothing must disturb the clean lines of the new kitchen diner extension. The old ceiling had two boxed-in steel girders running along its entire length, which hung down about 20cm below the line of the actual ceiling like ugly train tracks. I simply can’t have that, so the old steels, and consequently the entire ceiling, had to come down.
A weird result of this temporary carnage is that I can now stand in the soon-to-be kitchen and see the ceiling of the soon-to-be bedroom. It’s a bit disorientating so I left my lovely builder in the photo for scale!
The old boot room
The new boot room is nearly there
The new boot room appearing
It will be a few more weeks before we start to build the place back up inside, but outside, new walls are sprouting. The boot room is almost finished and looking fab and next week the lovely chaps who built it are going to help me create a 7m long treehouse in the garden.
Green chevrons for the master walls & mushroom grey for the floor
Massive marble slabs for the guest bathroom walls, dark mushroom for the floor
10p sized mother of pearl circles for the downstairs cloakroom. I think it might look like the inside of an oyster!
I did manage to start the bathroom hunt this week. I found a fab tile place called Domus, their outlet has up to 80% off ticket price which is really helping keep costs down