The Room of Doom

I've been really busy lately doing things around the house in the run up to Christmas. This will be our first year here as a family. The boys go to their Dad's every two years and it so happened that Christmas 2015 was a Daddy year. Needless to say, I'm blooming excited! Last year we put the tree up in the worst room in the house, affectionately known as the room of doom. One day I hope to refer to it as the Withdrawing Room. Kind of a grown up hang out snug.

This room was absolutely drenched when we moved in. The fascias were trapping the rain in, where the outside render was taken right up to their edge. Rather than protecting the house, the result meant the water had nowhere to go but inside. When it rained the wall inside wept (at least that's how it felt)! Water would also pour down the chimney, pooling in the fireplace. The plaster and interior render had mostly blown and the room smelled very damp and musty. It had a kids dragon lamp hanging up as a makeshift light and the paint had flaked off and continued to do so. Meaning I'd have to hoover the walls to stop it continuously being all over the floors looking like a bloody snowstorm!.

I decided last week to give this room a patch plastering and pre Christmas lick of paint, it couldn't make it any worse Well, that turned into a slightly larger chore. This seems to happen every time I bloody touch anything!!! Dave said he just knew this was going to happen! Whilst knocking off the blown plaster I made the mistake of just investigating what was underneath it. I mean, I knew I'd have to replaster them anyway, so taking a little bit more off for a peek surely couldn't hurt, could it?

I knocked a wee bit of the plaster off, then a little of the render, oooh I found stone. I chipped away a little more...partly thinking what the hell have I started, as I had no plan and was, to be honest, just making a massive mess! As tends to happen, Dave came and started pulling bits off too. Then he went and found bolsters and chisels. We set to work. This was really hard going and I was regretting starting it after about 2 hours. I am however, VERY stubborn and wont be beaten by things. I called Dad and he bought over his hammer chisel drill. Now, this is possibly one of my favourite bits of kit for wrecking shit...IT ROCKS! Dave and I then took turns for as long as we could tolerate it ripping the concrete render off the walls! With ringing ears, throbbing elbows, new bruises and shredded hands, around 8 hours later we had exposed a beautiful Forest stone wall surrounding the old fireplace. It clearly had been damp for some time, needed some attention, but was a sight to behold. Jesus, we were knackered! I also had the small matter of patch plastering the other two walls still to do. Mind you, plastering small areas is nothing to me these days, so it was more fatigue than reluctance regarding that task! Even so, I had to finish the job, otherwise it would set me back another couple of weeks. Dave made up the plaster and I put it on the walls. Thankfully, its all rough plaster in this house, as my blistered hands had virtually given up the ghost by then.

This weekend I have painted the plastered walls, one a warm grey as I thought it would compliment the Forest stone, I will add some subtle stencil on this at some point (mixed from three odd chalk paint tins I had -, so I could never recreate that colour), the other white. The stone wall needs cleaning up, a hole rebricking and repointing, which may take some time. The edges of the ceiling on the stone wall need fixing and replastering, but I'm allowing the damp to dry out for another couple of weeks first. The floor has gaps going down into the cellar so it's a bit drafty, they will need filling. I'm actually debating using that vile expanding foam stuff as it will do the job quickly for winter. In the future I will look at getting a liner put down the chimney so we can use the wood burner, and maybe put some rattan carpet down, but finances wont permit that just yet.

The room is looking really cosy (even if it's bloody freezing)! I've put up new curtains, we moved the red Chesterfields (thanks again to Clive & Jess for the 2 seater) into the room and put an old trunk in as a coffee table. As usual I'll fill it with my hoarded vintage stuff, that's a given - I cant actually help myself! So even if we don't get it all done before December the 25th, it is liveable and the Christmas tree will look far cuter than it did last year not being covered in paint (snow)flakes!

*I'm writing this with gloves on and a glowing fire from the old rotten red shed beams on the wood burner. Free fuel!