The Demolition Begins

So we've been in the house about 6 weeks, so about time to start pulling it apart then! One of the great things about having a second lounge area out the back is, we can destroy the front one without really causing too much grief of having no where to sit and relax.

As you can see the lounge on the day we moved in became a bit of a dumping ground. Boxes and bags everywhere.



Actually it remained a dumping ground more or less right up until we decided to start the redecoration.

The lounge itself is quite big, large bay window, chimney breast and rather hideous wall lights, but oddly no centre ceiling light. Also as you can see a fetching circa 1970's gas fire, and hidden under the boxes a coal effect glowing front thing.... It had to go! Plus we decided we wanted a real fire that a labrador could sit and cook itself infront of.

So first things first off came all the wallpaper. Steve pulled the top patterned bit off quite easily, then I spent about 3 nights after work steaming off the backing paper.

It's quite exciting seeing what is revealed as the paper comes off, the plaster patterns always tell a story. From the shape of the marks on the chimney breast I suspect there was once a large mantelpiece with possibly a mirror or something above it. It had been bricked up with breeze block, then plastered over. So out came the chisel. And this was the result...



So, the next step is to decide what we want in the form of fireplace, we had a chap come around from a fireplace company in Southampton who let us know the options. Whichever we choose I'm sure I'll end up bricking the hole back up again to make the opening smaller. In the meantime we need to get a chimney sweep to some and give it a brush and tell us if it's fire worthy. I can see daylight up it, but we noticed a bit of damp coming through the chimney breast. I think that's down to lack of air circulation, as the gas fire only had a tiny slit that vented to the chimney itself.

And if you're interested this is a picture looking up the chimney before I knocked it out. You can see where it disappears around to the left. This is where the damp is coming through.