Attic Progress

The attic work is under way, and it's going well. We pulled out the fitted wardrobe - which took a little longer than expected, because whoever fitted it had some of fetish about using lots and lots of nails. The removed chipboard and plasterboard are going into a skip, which arrived yesterday, and will be filled up tomorrow. The more solid bits of actual timber that were forming the structure, I'm hanging on to; some of them have already become the frame of a miniature greenhouse, and the rest will find uses in the garden.

The next bit was putting down flooring. First, though, it was necessary to raise the level a bit, as there are lots of wires, pipes, and other bits that cross the actual rafters. The optimal height to raise it was exactly 5cm, but annoyingly, this falls short of the floor level in the bedroom, since the bedroom floor is on thicker, deeper rafters. I looked into what I'd need to do to make the floors match in level, but it would have been difficult, and made the overall structure rather weaker than I was happy with. So there are 5cm square beams crossing the rafters at right angles, about 35cm apart, and the high-density particleboard "loft panels" rest on these. There were support beams, wires, and other things to navigate around, and by and large, it has come out very neatly. There are a few more bits to slot in, but that's waiting on the replacement jigsaw blades I bought this morning.

We had a local electrician in to lay cables for the sockets and light fittings, and those have been accommodated as well. The cables will disappear behind panelling of one kind or another when everything is finished. Once everything else is in place, the electrician will come back in to do the final fittings.

Since there's a support beam at ceiling level as well, the old opening for the fitted wardrobe is becoming the opening into the new space - a doorway without a door. This will become a feature, and I plan to put a nice timber step - only a centimetre or two high - in the opening to allow for the difference in floor levels.

We're also putting up a hardboard ceiling - this won't be the final surface; it's just to keep the insulation material at bay for now. It's about two-thirds in place, and is awaiting the jigsaw blades as well before it can be finished.

The next bit will be to put in the storage. There are various details to work around with this, as there were with the flooring; beams and access to the water tank being the main ones. Once I'm done with the floor and ceiling, I can start to measure and calculate how we can get the most storage out of the space that's there. Long drawers and pull-out rails will certainly feature. The spare mattresses, which were such a nuisance to get in and out before, are being disposed of; we got a chair-bed for the study downstairs, and we'll get an air mattress or two in case of extra need. Not having those will free up a lot of storage, and put less constraint on what we can do.

And when all of that is in place, we'll finish it out with tongue-and-groove panelling, as in the bathroom downstairs, and put something a bit nicer on the floor.

Attic Plans

We have plans for the attic. While our house has an upper story, it's all within the roof - there's only one room up there, and the one window is in the gable wall. The room doesn't occupy all of the attic space, though - it goes from where the height rises to about one metre on one side to where it falls to about 1.5m on the other side. Now, that's uneven - because there's a section of actual "attic" there too, accessed through a door in the back of a built-in wardrobe. It's bare rafters at floor level - you put your foot through onto the plasterboard ceiling of the sitting room - and insulation more-or-less held in place with a sheet of clear plastic tacked to the roof rafters.

The access doorway is very narrow, and it's a pain in the neck (and sides, leg, and some other parts) to get anything large through, because once you're through, you have to twist the thing or hit the roof pretty much immediately. It's also partly full of stuff - spare mattresses, boxes of seasonal decorations, and stuff in storage for a charity bring-and-buy stall we run at conventions.

The plan is, essentially, to take out the dividing wall entirely, or as much as possible, and extend the bedroom floor and ceiling down into that space. We can then put screens or a curtain or something across where the wall was, if need be, but mostly it'll be storage space. A skylight will let in some light, the mattresses can lie flat, and we might even get a small desk or the like in there as well. And it'll be a matter of walking in, crouching a bit at the far side, but no more struggling through the narrow access door - and it'll make the master bedroom about 30% bigger.

The upstairs floor is chipboard under the carpet, and I think we'll replicate that in the soon-t0-be-ex-attic space; we can put down something nicer over it later on. The ceiling will almost certainly be tongue-and-groove panelling, which we both like, and which worked well in the bathroom. I'll need to leave access to the water storage tanks, but that can be behind a door, or maybe even a hinged set of shelves - access there won't be needed often.

A light fitting, or maybe some wall-mounted lamps, a socket or four, and it'll be a very nice extra space.

Bedroom Decor

We've been considering a Moroccan theme for the bedroom, although I'm finding that widening that to North Africa/Middle East seems to be more productive. This is some of my current thinking.

The room is up under the roof, with a central section of flat roof, which slopes to about five feet on one side (in which there are some fitted wardrobes and access to the attic), and about three on the other, where the bed is, headboard against the wall. Furniture I'd really like to hang onto includes the antique wardrobe and chest of drawers/dressing table we got from freecycle. They're both dark mahogany.

I want colours to be either earth tones or jewel tones. No pastels, no primaries - I found myself looking at this one and going "what about blue and red?", but I reckon that pure blue and red aren't much used in this style.

Most things should have a texture of some kind - either patterning, or an actual physical texture.

Lighting should be from things that cast some of their own shadows - lantern style with patterned cuts, for instance. These Eygptian lanterns are utterly gorgeous, and I want them all. The central pendant light that's there at the moment really has to go.

And I'd like to do something with storage - books and clothes - that echoes the orderly market scenes. I'm not sure how to approach that one, though. I don't want open storage, and obviously, our clothes can't be made to fit the colour schemes. But I'd like it if drawers and wardrobes, when opened, looked like part of the room, and not the backstage area of the set, as it were.

Thinking continues.