The thing always happens that you really believe in;and the belief in a thing makes it happen. Frank Lloyd Wright

Meanwhile back in the main bedroom work has started to build up the new walls for the room and the en-suite.
In the following photo you can see the window to the left that is to become the new family bathroom (on the landing), the cupboard above the stairwell (behind the stud work) which is where I found the letter and a mesh of old and new stud work timber frames. This framework has a layer put up by the previous owner (in the 1970's) and the newer looking wood is the framework put up by my builder to thicken the depth of the original wall which would also allow us to fit acoustic rock-wool to make a more robust sound barrier. At the far right you can see the beginnings of the formation of the new en-suite which has been added to the old built in wardrobe.

The loose timbers leaning up against the stud wall are just some of the many timbers that I salvaged from the areas that I demolished.












The following two pictures demonstrate the way in which the wall was then created and the door to the landing positioned. At last the room starts to take shape.

Over in the en-suite the plumber was struggling once again with the copious quantities of flint tearing out enough to make a rockery just so he could seclude two pipes for the shower's feed.

The white pipes in the last photo come up from the landing floor and hidden in both that cavity and under the floor boards next to the chimney breast I found two old, but quite large, mouse nests. They appeared to have made them from the large amounts of newspapers that Percy (the previous owner) had used in his renovations. All were very faded....

The builder then erected stud work on the existing wall that separated this room from the next one and also filled this with acoustic soundproofing rock-wool. I had asked for this as the lath and plasters hollow 4" seemed inadequate to me and so that wall is now some 8" thick which on testing has seemed very effective.

The wall at the far end now 8" thick

Throughout this episode the electricians and the plumber were working around us and most days we were having to carry out some decorating job ahead of their next days work which really restricted what we could do. We were scheduled to have a guest in this room in just 10 days time and we had no plaster on the walls, the ceiling was still to be plastered (and then )painted , the electrics were still a long way from being completed, there were just pipes in the en-suite and a shower tray. The two radiators had also yet to be fitted.

 The room was still full of building materials and chunks of skirting board missing. Furthermore we had decided to give the room a special 'feature' wall behind the bed covering it in pine tongue and groove just to give ourselves added pressure. Oh, and of course we had to buy the carpet, get it laid, paint the walls (before the carpet came of course), order the bed (and build it), furnish the room and rub down the windows and repaint.


Then there was the en-suite......


This was missing a toilet, a sink, a shower cubicle, some floor boards, the floor covering, the lights, the extract fan, the heated towel rail and oh yes a door would be nice too.

Of course we couldn't even start the painting of the main room until 2 to 3 days after it had been plastered.

The 10 days also included 2 weekends so that meant of those 10 days we had no trade people doing any work on the place for 4 of them!

The pressure was most certainly upon us.

All this time we had B&B guests staying with us in the other bedroom and we were having to keep things running quite normally for them as if none of this was going on.

Now the guests that had booked in this second room were aware that the room may have been of a poor décor because they had been so desperate for a room to see the big Christmas show at Thursford they took what we had. We thought that we would have had this room done by early November and they thought they were getting the old existing set up. So whilst they were prepared for poor décor, they certainly were expecting a minimum of plaster on the walls and a bed!!


Would we achieve?

Would we have to put them up in a hotel?

Would they have to have our bed??

Would we have to sleep in the tent??? ...... In November!!!!

At this stage even we didn't know what the outcome was going to be.

TUNE IN NEXT TIME TO FIND OUT WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED..............









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