Can He Build it ? Yes he can

David has been renovating the cottage inside, a huge job, as this part of the house was built in 1850, has 2 foot thick walls, has sloping ceilings, nothing square ( walls or floorboards or ceiling) and had no concealed  electrics, all the cables ran along  the wall. He has been working in the upstairs area, which was 2 bedrooms with a pretty awful bathroom. The plan was to turn the rooms into two bedrooms en suite, with proper electrics and plumbing. Rather stupidly I thought that we could do one room then the other, but in reality they both had to be done together, as all the internal walls needed to be removed so the rooms could be reshaped from 3 rooms into 2.

This meant that all the furniture that was upstairs had to be stored in the dining room down stairs and apart from the linen cupboard in the bathroom we had no cupboards at all. Any way, we are now four months into the project, have been covered in dust for the whole of this time. A s always David has done a superb job, with very little help from local workmen. All the walls were ripped out, we had new stud work built for the new walls, the whole of the top floor was rewired, replastered, and David has built two super bathrooms en suite, each with a huge walk in shower, and heated towel rails. He has also had to re route ( or actually implement proper plumbing, drilling 4inch holes through the 2 foot thick walls to put all the pipes through. The previous bathroom had one of those macerator sort toilet thingies, that make a huge noise, get blocked easily and are generally a smelly nightmare. We have also had to put in soundproofing, as the floorboard upstairs is the ceiling downstairs and you could hear each and every sound, wither you wanted to or not. So some very heavy rubber matting was put down and then an acoustic  underlay before having the carpet fitted. This has all made a huge difference , thank heavens. W e are now on the home run, have had  a couple of small wardrobes built in,and are just waiting for another bed to be delivered. Next job for me is to work out what I am going to do about the covering for the windows, think they might have to have blinds set into the recesses. Also looking for some art work for the walls, would like to use a local artist who does some beautiful  pastels of local scenes. W e were looking at some of her prints at a local fair the other day, and also saw that she had done a lovely one of a blacksmith at work, which we might get for the dining room. The name of the house Llaingof, roughly translates to the blacksmith along the side of the road.

We are trying to get permission to use these two bedrooms as bed and breakfast accommodation, but the council seems to be unwilling/ unable to provide us with exactly what standards we need to meet. They have come up with such ideas like submit your plan and and then we will let you know what you might need to do. Hope to get the plans in this week, don’t like to ask David to do those drawings as well along with all the other stuff he is busy with.