Tour of the house (as is now)

We are about to start thinking about in some more detail what we want the final layout of the house to be. We have lived here a little while now to get some idea of what we need.

Before we start here is a quick tour through what is currently here.
A the moment only the downstairs is habitable, it was probably originally two rooms, one either side of the front door. Now one room is a multi purpose living/dining/kitchen and the other has been divided in to two bedrooms and a bathroom.

Living room/Dining room/Kitchen

The room is divided in to two parts with the kitchen area being separate.
The living/dining area (fire on left, kitchen on right). Bit cluttered with boxes. Outside the window you can see the hill rising behind the house. 

Looking towards back of house

Kitchen is to the right in this picture, this window is out the front of the house and has a lovely view (although currently a lot blocked by big hedge).  The fireplace to the right here needs the chimney breast removing as it is falling down behind the plasterboard cladding.

Looking towards front of house

This is the kitchen area (dining/living area is to left). Pantry is through door at back right. Cooker uses bottled gas and the oven is RUBBISH. Hot water boiler on wall to back left. Also runs on bottled gas and is VERY old.

Looking towards back of house

There isn't really any worksurface, I use a chopping board on the cooker for most things, good as it means you have to tidy up as you go along, but bad because not possible to make things like pasta or pastry that need somewhere to roll them out (table surface not good as would get scratched when cutting)

Pantry

The pantry is behind the stairs on the cool north side of the house. It is quite grotty at the moment. We want to have some similar unheated area for keeping jams/preserves etc in the future.

There is an interesting stone sink in there which we would like to move somewhere more prominant, perhaps the outdoors kitchen. Should be nice when cleaned up.

Hallway

There is currently quite a wide hallway leading to the two bedrooms and bathroom. Full of boxes at the moment. Has a nice window which should eventually be in the living room.

Bathroom

Looking towards front of house

Bedroom

The bedroom is at the back of the house. Originally it was a single room with the bathroom, spare room and hallway. The original window at the back is where the wall between the two bedrooms in and has been filled in in a rubbish way with breeze block and the two new windows punched through in an ugly crappy way. We are not quite sure what to do about it as we want to return this to being a single room (living room)

Looking towards back of house

Looking towards front of house

Spare room

The spare room is next to the bedroom and has a lot of boxes in it at the moment as well as a spare bed and whatever beer is brewing. I think the plasterboarding was done 12 or more years ago before the person who sold it to us bought it. There is a big fireplace in here similar to the one in the living room but less fally downy so hopefully it can stay as is in the new living room.

Looking towards back of house

Stairs

The stairs are a bit cronky but have a nice banister and side bit. We might want them in a bit of a different place to allow room for a bootroom inside the front door. It seems a shame in some ways as some bits are nice, but probabl we would need to redo them anyway as the floors will be at different heights than they are now once we have new floors, under floor heating etc

Upstairs (right room)

This is probably going to be a bedroom. A big huge bedroom which we can use for yoga and other things when there are no guests. You can see the chimney breast that needs to come down in the middle of the picture. Somewhere there will be a bathroom too. Where depends what is possible for the plumbing. Like all the upstairs it needs insulating as that is the underside of the slate tiles you can see.

Looking towards the outdoor kitchen

Looking towards front of house

Upstairs (left room)

Here we will need to have a corridor at the back so we can get in to the 'bee room', which will be our bedroo, through the door in the photo.There will also be a bedroom, smaller than the one on the other side of the stairs and probably sharing a bathroom with it.

Looking towards the 'bee room'

Looking towards front of house

Looking back towards the stairs

Upstairs (bee room)

The previous owner kept many hives of bees in this room because they need feeding less over the winter if they are kept warmer. It means this room has a peculiar smell at the moment. Something we will be starting on soon is ripping out the cladding in this room so we can have vents put in the whole roof before insulation goes in.
We are planning on this being our bedroom with an ensuite. This room is above the garage (which is going to be the boiler and freezer room) so we need to insulate the floor also for heat and sound.

Looking towards front of house

Through to door on to the balcony

Along the balcony

View from the balcony (currently with chickens)

Looking back up in to the other part of the house

 Garage/boiler room to be

This is below the 'bee room' and the plan is to have the central heating system in here which will be a big very well insulated hot water tank fed by a wood burning stove (not a 'pretty' one but a big industrial very efficeint one) and solar hot water panels on the roof as well as having an emersion heater for emergencies. The water will be heated pretty hot (90C) and then be used via heat exchange to heat the hot water and under floor heating (downstairs) and radiators (upstairs). This is the current plan anyway but we need to talk to the plumber in more detail. We also plan on having a number of big chest freezers in here to store meat and veg as well as bikes, tools etc. It is a big space but we think the heating system will take up a lot so we will have to work out what there is room for.

The outdoors kitchen and bread oven

 The plan is to have an outdoor kitchen here. Currently we have the table and chairs and have had quite a few BBQs here. We will concrete the floor and probably put in a sink and move the cooker from the kitchen out here when we have done the indoors kitchen and have a new cooker.
The little room through the door has a bread oven at the back of it, not exactly sure how it is meant to work but the chimney is outside the bread oven above the little room. We believe we should be able to restore the bread oven - after we finish the house of course. We will concrete through in to here and use it for storing pig/cat/chicken etc food. At the moment it is choka block with rubbish and lengths of naily wood.

Outdoors kitchen

 At the moment there is a pillar in the middle of the area holding up (kind of) the various beams that hold the roof up. We are planning on reroofing this with slate the same as the house roof. As this will include a new beam we won't need the support in the middle of the room any more.

Shonky support and roof beam

The bread oven door is in the middle of the picture

Looking in to bread oven room

Phew! That is the end of the very long tour.