More stuff we are thinking about

I have put in a few posts with specific items we are thinking about eg the layout, the heating and finishing the beams. In addition to these there is a long list of other things we are thinking about

Upstairs floors
We plan on lifting the floor upstairs and replacing ourselves. Our thinking at the moment is that we want wood floors upstairs (except probably the bathroom). We want it to be reasonably insulated for sound so that downstairs you don't hear people clonking around upstairs. We also need the bedroom at least insulated for heat as the boiler will be downstairs from it. We have no idea what the structure of the floor should be to achieve this. presumably there needs to be space in it somewhere for pipework for the bathrooms also.
 
Septic tanks
We currently have two. One is shoddy to say the least and drains away under the house, it only has water from the kitchen in it. The other was inspected as part of us buying the house and is considered to meet regulations although it is not quite clear if it will be big enough for normal occupancy of a house with people taking showers etc. In the case that the shoddy one is unacceptable we then have to work out how we will get the kitchen water either round to the other tank or some other drain away solution.

Floor downstairs
We want to have underfloor heating downstairs. This means either digging up the existing floor and replacing with insulation and then pipework and concrete or laying the insulation, pipework and concrete on top of the existing floor. Having spoken to a few workmen about it it sounds like the 2nd option is going to be the financially viable one. However before we do this we might try to prise some of the marble out of the existing floor and reuse it perhaps in the outdoor kitchen

Wall finish
Upstairs we are planning on having exposed stonework, downstairs we would like to have what we can exposed. We know that some bits of the wall have had concrete put on them (around the windows in what are now the bedrooms for example) and we expect other bits to be less nice also. So we are thinking that we will have some exposed stonework where it is nice and lime plaster the rest. We are not quite sure how to do the wiring where the stonework is exposed. In plastered or plasterboard walls the wires to a switch for example are hidden inside the wall but what do you do where it is stone. What we have come up with so far is that you run it down in something reasonably attractive like a copper pipe and you also plan carefully where the plugs will be to facilitate this.

Stair style
A lot of this depends on the floorplan, but there are some things that feed in to what makes a sensible floor plan. For example; are we willing to put up with the inconvenience of spiral stairs, would steps with no riser (the upright bit) make sense in some locations to let light through, what can we most usefully do with the space under the stairs, do we want something snazzy and modern looking or nice traditional oak.

Kitchen Layout
This is partially dictated by what we do with the windows (and of course the rest of the floor plan) but we are keen to have a kitchen that is a sitting/living space also. So when I am sent off to cook the dinner I am not all on my own, it would be comfortable for Doug and the dog and visitors to sit in the kitchen during this time. We also need space for future activities like butchering the pigs, making cheese & jam etc, brewing and so on. I have been thinking it would be nice to have somewhere that is a good height for sitting down while doing tasks like shelling chestnuts, cutting up fruit etc. Maybe normal work surface height would be ok with a stool or something or maybe we need something breakfast bar type height.

The front door
The front door at the moment looks quite nice mainly because of the decorative iron bits from the hinges, but it is a bit knackered and not at all weather tight. For this winter we will have to try to tape up the worst gaps but we need to decide what to replace it with. We would like to keep the current hinges but this could cause some issues when the floor is raised with the under floor heating. We are not quite sure yet what to do about this but it is possible the boot room will have a slightly lower floor and no underfloor heating to allow this. But perhaps this is silly to do just for the sake of some hinges that presumably we could manage to relocate (they are concreted in to the wall)

The outside walls
Currently the front wall is rendered with concrete render. This doesn't let the stones breathe and is bad for them as well as probably increasing damp inside the house so it needs to be removed. We are not sure whether we will re-render with lime render or just re-point so that some of the stone shows. It is likely that the surround of some of the windows is not very aesthetic as the bathroom one and the kitchen door are not original and where we can see what is round the windows at the back of the house it is just concrete which has been slapped on very haphazard. The back of the house we will probably render as it is a bit of a mess where windows have been hacked in to it. Unfortunately where one of the original windows was replaced with two windows (where the bedrooms are) the original window is filled in in a very ugly way with breeze blocks and the new windows are not neatly done. We may refill the original window or we may fill in the new ones and unblock the original, not sure yet but having 2 windows is probably nice. It would look silly if we just unblocked the original one as they would not be evenly spaced and too close together.

Outside pipes
The toilet outflow from the bathrooms upstairs will have to come down the front of the house to the septic tank. We are not quite sure what to do about this as that would not be terribly attractive. One thought is to try to bring at least the one from the main bathroom down inside the house and out at the same place as outflow from the toilet downstairs. Then where we do need to have pipes outside have nicer metal ones not plastic.

I am sure there are many more things that haven't come immediately to mind...