As I mentioned in my previous post not only are there a whole heap of issues with the upper house, the basement isn't problem-free either 😒 It's called the Copford basement and I've had it so long that I can't even remember what company made it! What I do know, however, is that I bought it because I wanted an additional floor and it was close to the size of the Somerby house.
Its opening panels are on the sides so that creates a bit of a problem straightaway. Because my ultimate aim is to have it in our new porch, every time I want/need to get to the rooms I shall have to turn the house since the cabinet it will be displayed on won't be sitting in the middle of the room in splendid isolation! However that's not too much of a problem because I don't think I will actually be needing/wanting to get inside every five minutes.
Nope, a far bigger problem takes us right back to the thorny issue of stairs yet again *sigh* Before I removed the lower section of the back of the upper house, I balanced it on the basement (minus its base) so that I could see how things lined up.....or didn't, as you can see. To be fair, I wasn't really expecting the walls to line up since the basement wasn't made for the house. Had the rooms in the basement been set the other way around, though, then I think the dividing wall wouldn't actually have been that far off being in line with the walls on the left-hand side of the upper house.
I've finally come to the conclusion that the most sensible solution for the upper house is to make the rooms on the right smaller, so that the landing areas can be large enough to accommodate dog-leg staircases. I've been saving cardboard boxes so that I've got plenty of material to try some mock-ups before I commit to anything 😄 I shall also have to go down this route with fitting stairs from the basement. I think I shall get the stairwells cut out in the upper house, including the base, then use said base as a template for the top of the basement. I will cut out the corresponding hole for the stairwell and see what I can do to alter the dividing wall in the basement to accommodate it. Of course had the upper house and basement been three or four inches deeper I could have had runs of straight staircases, which would have been very much simpler all round.
This wall needs some alterations anyway because I want the doorway between the two rooms set closer to the front wall. It may come down to having to actually move the wall further to the left so that it is in line with the walls in the upper house. The problem with that is that the walls are all set in routed out grooves, so I would either have to try to rout some new grooves or trim down the wall so that it is simply set between the base and the ceiling. As they say, watch this space 😉
So after Derek and I had had a long chat about all the staircase issues, he pointed out other problems he and Albert had come across too.
First of all, the doorway from the basement out to the garden area is simply not tall enough ~ it's not very wide either! What do you think of Derek's pink trainers, by the way? He wore them all day for a bet ~ I believe he won a few pints down at his local that evening 😄
It would be very awkward getting out of the door beneath those steps to the upper house.
The steps themselves are also somewhat steep, narrow...
and uncomfortable to walk up and down.
And just look at all that unusable space beneath what is meant to be used as the pavement!
The upshot of all this was that after consultations with Sir Peter, Lady Constance, and Christopher the decision was made that the entrance to Augusta Lodge will be moved to the side of the basement, as I mentioned in the previous post. This really opens up the space in front of the basement, which will make a nice little courtyard garden in due course. There are going to be a number of alterations made to the front house wall of the basement ~ it's a bloody good job I've got that shiny new tool so I can help the lads out 😄
I'm pretty sure the lads weren't terribly thrilled when I showed them the schedule of works Sir Peter and I had drawn up (that's what's on the clipboard on the right) even though I bought them a couple of shiny new saws ~ especially young Graham, who I expect sees his future holding much more physically exerting work than he is used to 😄
No comments:
Post a Comment