As they sat together and discussed their plans for each of their futures, the ideas bounced around off the dark, scrim-covered walls and crumbling plaster ceiling. Before you could say "arts and crafts", the two men had grabbed their builder's apprentice tool-belts and were taking out the walls, determined to modernise and update the tired little house.
By the time they had finished, there was no longer a cold, dark little lounge in the corner of the house, off the cold, dark little hallway and cold, dark dining room. Now they had a cold, dark but huge lounge that merged into the dining room and had a front door in the corner of it. Brilliant thinking, just like so many of those great '70s ideas!
As it resulted in the rather awkward situation of the open fire sitting in the centre of the room, they rustled up a bag or ten of mortar and a couple of hundred recycled-recycled bricks and built a brick wall-of-China to 'blend' with the old open fire. It still looked a little lonely, so they extended the raised hearth and topped it with gorgeously trendy brown terracotta tiles, creating a groovy space to sit and cook fondu on. Now they could all chill together and listen to their latest cassette tapes of "Pink Floyd" and watch "Happy Days" on their new colour television set.
This is what the lounge looked like when we bought it, 40 years later:
The first thing to come out was all those bricks! I think it took us about 2 weeks, on-and-off, and the kids helped, husband helped, I did some, and finally we got some labourers in to finish it off as well as barrow down the rubble to the 2 skips we filled!
As you can see, in such a tiny house (143m2), the fireplace took up a huge area!
After this, I marked out the location for the 2 new walls that we were putting in, which interestingly proved to be exactly where the original walls had been, when we pulled up the carpet. Like I said, it's a small house, so we also went to the effort to have the wall between the new lounge and my youngest son's room sound-proofed as he hates being kept awake by the TV or conversation from the dozen or more teenage we have here each week!
I hadn't realised it at the time, but these two walls would necessitate the redecoration of every wall, floor, window, door and ceiling in three rooms - the new lounge, entrance hallway, and family rooms these created. This also involved stripping off very old wallpaper throughout, as well as skim-coating over virtually every original wall and plastering up the new ones. All the rimu skirting boards and architraves needed painting white, the doors and windows all needed to be painted to match the architraves and skirting boards, the rooms needed scotias installed and painted, the stained douglas fir t&g ceilings needed painting, the walls all needed painting or wallpapering... And when you go to this much effort, it makes sense to also replace the window dressings with new, insulating curtains, recover or replace the furniture which no longer matches, and replace the trashed carpet with new, soft carpet and the thickest underlay possible!
This is the result so far:
The couches and chair recovering has been mentioned in a previous post. This has been amazing and so worthwhile. I can't wait to cover more! I made all the cushions (I'm a little obsessed) and also made the curtains. These I also lined with thermal lining and interlined with polyester 'bump' for the best insulation possible!
I picked up all the old pictures from charity shops for $5 - $10 each, and mostly kept their original old and battered frames. The round side table is an outdoor table I don't have a use for that helpfully had a glass top! I had been looking for one online or at shops for weeks and suddenly realised this annoying table outside I had no use for would be great covered with excess fabric from the windows and my little collection of Carlton plates would look great on it!
The hydrangeas are fake and I love that they're fake! And the phone actually works and rings just like an old one!
A bunch of wool and fluffy blankets on the couches both keeps the arms clean as well as keeping kiddies cosy, and the colours all blend so well.
The final part of the story will be an entire wall of bookshelves from floor to ceiling and wall to wall over the entrance door to the lounge. I have started sketching ideas for this and can't wait to get it made and finished as we have moved our piles of hundreds of books about 5 times already since moving in! Once the shelves are complete, I doubt I'll have much space left for decor as I think the books will about fill them!
And all those bricks? The unbroken ones will be going on to a new life as a pathway in our spring garden...that hasn't been dug yet.
