Our Forever House - Second Floor

by Roz

I'm sorry that this post wasn't published last Tuesday (or Thursday!) as promised. I tend to do a lot of my blog post writing on a Sunday as, between my busy working week and putting in some hard labour at the new house, I don't seem to find much time for writing posts during the week.  But last Sunday was a really difficult day for me, it was the due date for our baby and despite expecting to find the day very difficult, it hit me really hard.  I don't think it helped that B was at work so I was alone with my own thoughts.  I was not in the right place to write excitedly about our forever house so thought it was best to hold off.
 

So things are getting exciting on the house tour, this is the bedroom floor :)  There are quite a lot of rooms on this floor and on site we have completed so much work on this level already.  As always the top of the architect drawing is the rear of the property and the bottom is the front.  So the large room at the front will be our master bedroom, which will also have a rather large walk in wardrobe (I can't actually write about it without grinning!) and a nice sized ensuite too.  There is a line missing from the drawing below - the ensuite, which is behind the stairs up to the attic, can't actually be accessed from the hall - that will be a small linen cupboard in the hallway.  The two rooms at the back of the house are Bedroom 2 and Bedroom 3 and share the shower room in the hall rather than being ensuite, as the plan for the future is for these to be kids' bedrooms.

The large cupboard in the middle of this floor (currently a mini kitchenette) is going to be our saviour I think!  We are going to keep a mini fridge in here so that we can grab a juice or make a cup of tea without having to go down two flights of stairs to the kitchen.  I might also intend to keep an emergency bottle of wine in the fridge too :)  In the future we might end up with a washing machine or a microwave in here but it's nice to have a space that has plumbing and power to be able to have what we feel we need once we start living in the property.

The Master Bedroom

I am so excited about this room, it's really one of the only rooms in the house that I have completely sorted in my head.  Or at least I thought I did until today.  B and I were at the house (ripping out some walls to create the ensuite) and he threw all my carefully considered plans for this room into disarray!  So people I need you to settle an argument... we want to have a feature wall in this room, I think the perfect wall is the one that the fireplace is on, B thinks it should be the wall behind the bed.  Erm what wall would that be exactly B?!  If you look in the picture below you'll see that due to the size of the windows and the wood surrounds, there is very little wall here and after I add big chunky curtains around the windows I don't think you would even see any of it.  What do you think readers?

We are going to remove the cupboard door (to the left of the window in the picture above) and have open shelving in the room - exactly the same as the shelving shown in Bedroom Two below - it means we don't have to worry about the door getting in the way and I like the thought of having some shelves in the room to dress with bits and bobs.

 The room we are turning into a massive wardrobe :)

We have so many ideas for the walk in wardrobe, I think we will probably utilise some of the Ikea Pax systems as you can design a good, bespoke space to suit your needs without spending a fortune.  I'm going to have a dressing table area under the window and I can't wait to have somewhere proper to store all of my make up, at the moment it lives all over the second bedroom in our flat as that's where I get ready for work every morning!  The room is also going to have underfloor heating so it's not too chilly in the winter and lots of spotlights and mirrors.  I can't wait to move my clothes, bags and shoes in :)

Bedroom Two

The second bedroom is a great sized room and has a lovely view not only of the back garden but out towards the Campsies.  The room currently has a massive walk in cupboard but this will become part of the shower room in our ensuite, so the door to the right of the fireplace in the picture below will be boarded up.  There is still plenty of room for free standing furniture, although I haven't really given much thought as yet to how I want to decorate this room.

Bedroom Two

Bedroom Three

This is the smallest of the bedrooms on this floor but is still a great size.  The room also benefits from having the built in storage in the corner.  We have already opened up the boarded up fireplace and whilst we are not going to reinstate it to a working fire, I will put a grate in the opening and have it as a feature in the room.

The shower room

This room looks quite small and I suppose it is, we think there is a false wall behind the toilet and the sink, we've yet to open it up and check, and if there is even a foot or two of space then this room will fit a bath with a shower above it.  If not, it will be a corner shower cubicle (where the sink currently lives) and moving the sink to the right of the door.  As it's quite a small room, we'll use some nice bright tiles and a large mirror to try and make it seem as light as possible. 

 The cupola

The cupola really is beautiful, not the West Ham United colour scheme(!) but having that to look up to on this floor really is something else.  I even love it at the moment and it leaks every time it rains.  Hopefully not for much longer as the work on the roof is due to start in less than two weeks!  Once the exterior of the cupola is fixed, including installing reinforced glass to replace the dull, grey perspex, we will need to fix the plaster and re-paint the interior too.  We are giving a lot of thought to what colour/s to paint around the cupola as I think it would be a shame not to define all that cornicing work with some different colours, but I'm worried we get it wrong.  As we'll need heavy duty internal scaffolding across the main staircase to paint this area it's not going to be cheap or easy to repaint if we decide we don't like it, eeeek!!

I hope you enjoyed the tour of the second floor, please come back next week to read about the final floor - the attic, which of course includes the LIBRARY!!!

Roz xx