A tale of two parts

Part the First

Feeling a little more settled about what was going to be in this room box, it was time to finally decide what form the fourth wall should take.

Another slide in from above as for the dining room, a see through wall as in the kitchen; an interference fit for a switch back to old ways as in Hogepotche Hall?

Sadly I’d been imagining it as hinged and I’m terrible at fitting hinges.  A piano hinge was used for the study fourth wall but it didn’t fit that well and I’d made multiple tries to get it right.

The thought this time was more along the lines of a more traditional hinged couple of doors.  Partly because the box space has two room functions, as in the kitchen/breakfast box thought in this case they entirely open together to the viewer, which would mean that the fourth wall for this box would have to reflect both room spaces’ activities and decor across its single width.

Putting them both on one flush surface was not what I’d fancied.

I’d done it once before in Victoria Villas (four rooms all together- two kitchen/living spaces and two attic style bedrooms)
I disliked it very much, calling it “the offending wall”

If, instead, the fourth wall this time were to be divided into two hinged sections then, the theory goes, it should prevent the ‘patchwork quilt look’ of the above. The two halves would, when open, hopefully give each space the feeling of being extended outwards towards the viewer separately.

So much for the theory.  I’ve done one of the doors so far and it just about hangs straight and seems to open and close without falling foul of anything.

A ‘bit of a room extension’

Part the Second

Somewhere in amongst all the fiddling around with very small screws and delicate hinging, an awkward thought struck me.  I’d altered the size of the bathroom window and chosen a frame that is that little bit larger.  This would have building implications regarding the yet to be started Sitting Room Box!  (That mucks up the ‘planning consent’)

The bedroom and sitting room boxes are to sit back to back, with the bedroom/bathroom overlapping, it being slightly the longer of the two.  The fractionally larger bathroom window has messed this up and the sitting room base shows that it now overlaps the window just a little.  The external view below shows how little it is.

A small overlap but it really messes up the five boxes together theme of the build.

Today I set the boxes out together, ensuring the existing doorways overlapped correctly

All the so far roofless boxes and one proposed sitting room base – as was

View from the bathroom end of the new box through the study and into the kitchen

and figured out a new room size for the sitting room box.  It loses a little width and gains a little depth, so not too bad a mess up.  And the existing doorways all match up.

The return of Part the First

Another long period of ‘deep thought’.  Oscar Wilde reportedly said “This wallpaper is killing me.  One of us has to go”

I can hardly complain that the bedroom wallpaper is proving lethal, but it has been getting on my nerves.  The balloon above my head ‘big idea’ to get over this was to put a border paper between the ceiling cornice and the picture rail, to give the eye a break from the relentless Morris pattern in maroon.  So I messed about a bit in the selection of papers etc to hand, trying to find something that wasn’t going to take over or clash and was not generally intrusive and do the job I wanted.

Trying out some probably unlikely borders

In the end I went with printing out a single colour selected in my photo manipulating software from the main wallpaper and have been using strips to fill the space and releave the eye a little.

Bit pinky in shade and looking odd running at the top of the hinged fourth wall

It doesn’t look quite as odd in the box itself, thankfully.

One wall light in place and grey board as temporary ceiling

Whole of bedroom section so far

Should look better still with an all white ceiling and when more lights are added.

You may notice that somewhere in there I added the cornice running around the room and nearly broke my hands cutting mitres in the wood piece, but it doesn’t look badly thrown at the wall and should hold up that proposed ceiling nicely.

I’ve been fighting shy of adding the wooden door to the bedroom and I think I may use a fabric hanging instead so that the bedroom/bathroom combo becomes one with the study, the private ‘unit’ being shut off from the rest of the house by the study door into the kitchen.