Guest bedroom...at last!

 That's the view from our guest bedroom window, looking out over Scapa Flow towards the Southern Isles.  At night the lights of the oil terminal on Flotta twinkle in the darkness, which I realise doesn't sound in the least bit alluring but they do look pretty from a distance!

Work on the guest bedroom had been due to start in the spring of 2020 but, of course, that all got knocked on the head by Covid.  To be honest it didn't matter too much as obviously we didn't even see Beverly for quite some time, let alone have any visitors from further afield.  By the time restrictions had eased, all the tradesmen had masses of work to catch up with so that delayed things further.  Then because of the family stuff going on, we decided to postpone the work ourselves for a while but finally our lovely joiner, Shug, was able to get started in September.  And I do really mean that about Shug; he is a super chap, very obliging, reassuring (bearing in mind that work often does not run smoothly in St Abbs!) and full of useful suggestions. 

Once we knew when Shug was going to make a start we had to set-to and clear out the room... 

...which had basically become a dumping-ground for all and sundry.  The "stuff" from the room is now languishing in the dining room and my craft room, with the chests of drawers in our bedroom and chairs stacked in the upstairs bathroom!  No doubt some things will be put aside for the charity shop in due course, but for now I've decided to leave the keep-it-or-get-rid-of-it decisions until the room is ready to have things put back.  

(By the way, for a while you may well notice a mixture of watermarks on the photographs in posts here on the new blog.  This is simply down to when I've finally got round to sorting through the photos taken over the last few months, with some done before the name change and some after 😉)

This is why it's going to take a good number of years to work round the house, both from a monetary and a time point of view.  Each room needs to be stripped right back to the stonework (a horrible dusty job) so that we can put in additional plug sockets and add insulation.  So in the meantime we've decided to just live with the rooms as they are until we can have the job done properly.

Each of the original four rooms in the house has a fireplace, all of which have been ripped out and boarded-over at some point.  When we moved in all the chimney-pots had been sealed with lead caps, so as you can imagine, there was no air-circulation and lots of dampness.  This side of the house was particularly bad as the chimney had had its flashing "repaired" with roofing felt!  Replacing the roof and repairing the chimneys (which included fitting new pots with ventilated caps) was one of our first priorities, which cost us a lot more than we had anticipated, which is why it's going to take us so much longer to update the inside of St Abbs.  Although it was an unwelcome shock to our purse, the work was well worth doing; as you can see, although the plaster was shot to pieces, the lath dried out beautifully once there was the proper air circulation.  

The wall was pretty gunky over here and water had got into the original plug socket to the left of the fireplace, making it unusable.  As you can see our electrician, Ian, has now put in wiring for plenty of sockets.

  The cable hanging down on the left of the photograph is for the TV we have in the dining room, which is beneath the bedroom.  Ian also put in an additional ceiling light fixture for the dining room; for some reason, the fitting in there is way over to one side which didn't light the room very well at all.  We debated on whether to simply have it moved to the centre of the ceiling, but in the end decided to go with two lights as the room has a sort of alcove area at the back; having a pair of lights illuminates the room so much better than one would, wherever it was positioned. 

As you can see, the rooms upstairs are set partly in the roof space.

Here you can see that Shug has started to frame out the room.  We didn't have the ceiling taken down, it was much simpler (and far less messy!) for Shug to put up a framework over the top of it for the new plasterboard panels.

It was good to see the insulation going in...

...and the plasterboard going up.

What a difference, eh!

Shug left the internal walls as they were, simply putting new plasterboard over the top.

When the house was built, it would have basically been a rather large two-up, two-down with all the rooms being a similar size.  I'm not sure if originally the area between the two bedrooms would have simply been a large landing or if there would have been some kind of box-room. At some point during the house's history, though, some floor space from this bedroom was taken to either create the odd little room between the bedrooms or make what was there larger.  Whilst we have been able to make good use of it to create an upstairs bathroom, the guest bedroom itself was left with quite a chunk of usable space removed.  You wouldn't believe the amount of measuring and planning we've done, trying to wrap our heads around the best way to set out the furniture!   

Shug got the room to this point but couldn't progress any further, i.e. getting the woodwork put in place, until the walls and ceilings had had all the joints taped and filled.  And that point, my friends, is where we sat for about a month because we had a slight hiccup with the decorator.....