House on Arrival

So that was the garden. The house itself is in good repair, but we're going to have to redecorate. The existing wallpaper and colours aren't the kind of thing that would drive you completely insane, but they're not exactly us either - mostly fairly bland, and where there are stronger colours, they're not ones we'd choose.

This is the kitchen:


(Photography by Niall Murphy)

The house came with the white goods and some furniture - all three bedrooms have beds, there's a kitchen table and six chairs, a desk, some shelves and a dresser, and there's a three-piece suite in the sitting room. Of all of them except the bed in the master bedroom, it might truthfully be said that they've seen better days. Although I'm not entirely sure the couch and armchairs ever had good days; they're a style of hard, spindly wooden furniture with cushions, which I can't even pin on the taste of a given decade. The fifties, perhaps, although the house was only built in the seventies. I suspect they were brought in to have something in the house while it was up for sale, rather than having seen much real use.

It's a dormer bungalow, so there's only one room upstairs, and that's the master bedroom. It has an ensuite shower and loo, and there's access to the attic space as well - to the front and back of the bedroom, rather than above it.

We have plans for most of the rooms, short and long term, but these may well change as we get more ideas. Our short term plans go like this:

The sitting room will be becoming a library - we'll be putting shelves all along one of the long walls, and in the alcoves to either side of the fireplace, or possibly only one, because there's a display cabinet in the other, which we might keep. The fireplace itself may have to be replaced - the hearth is fine, and even has a boiler at the back, although we've yet to discover whether or not it's hooked up to anything. I can't imagine why anyone would disconnect it, but then again, people board up fireplaces these days. Nutters. We'll get at least a couch and an armchair in there. Possibly a three-seater sofa, a chaise-longue, and an armchair.

The kitchen will have to stay as it is for now, although getting a dishwasher in there will probably be a priority. I don't mind washing up - I do it in the morning, and find it meditative - but the other occupants of the house are in favour of the mechanical option. The table is big enough to play games at, which I approve of. We'll put our own dresser in here alongside the existing one, and we've added a microwave to the other goods there already. The door between the entrance hall and the kitchen may need to be replaced with a sliding door - it's rather in the way as it is.

Of the two back bedrooms, one will go to The Lodger, who has some crazy ideas about painting all the walls white, except for one which will have floor to ceiling blackboard paint. He's liable to change his mind, though. The other will become the War Room - containing enough desks to support the computer habits of three fairly technical people. It's on the south side of the house, so we'll actually see some natural light in there as well.

There's a bathroom downstairs, with a bath in. I don't think there are any plans to change anything in there in short term, beyond making the hotpress accessible for the cats.

Upstairs, the master bedroom will see some more furniture that we already own brought in - a big, old wardrobe, a dressing-table/chest of drawers affair, and a linen chest. This should realistically provide us with enough storage space. The floorboards on the window side of the room creak something awful, so I'm going to have to have a word with them in the reasonably near future. Again, there's not a huge amount that can be done with the ensuite in the short term.

The back door will need a cat-door put in. We might need to consider cat doors in some internal doors as well, but that will come as we get used to the layout of the place, and what doors need to be open. Outside, the shed that's not in the main part of the garden contains a freezer and a clothes dryer, and has enough room to do a fair bit of storage, or possibly be fitted with a bench and enough shelves to work as a small workshop for the moment. The other shed is really suitable only as a garden shed, although if it can be stabilised a bit, I'd consider a green-house lean-to on the south side of it.

Discussion of further plans will appear on a room by room basis, and probably spin off into wild fantasies more suitable for castle restoration than a seventies dormer bungalow.