Thursday 4 October 2012

My lovely old old house part 2

Thank you for all your lovely comments about my vintage kitchen. I ploughed my way through the photos on the estate agent's CD from when we sold it eight years ago and put together some collages to show you beyond the kitchen.
It's a Georgian stone cottage. One of a pair and owned for many many years by the local church.
When we bought it it had been rented out for years and had the most spectacular rockery in the living room!
Just a trace of the original behind.
 
  A sledge hammer took care of that along with a trip to the reclamation yard for a fireplace and a load of wide floorboards. It's not often you lift the carpet to find the rotten holes have been covered with flattened catering size baked bean cans.
 Damp proofing and replastering revealed interesting structure.


 Well eventually we got there. For a couple of years it was a deep red - lovely in the winter but very dark the rest of the time so out came the brushes and it ended up in Skylight. One of my F&B faves I've used it in every house since.
The pretty cottage garden with my chapel doors.
The bath was another auction bargain. Only once we'd hired a flatbed truck to bring it home and roped in several strong friends to lift it down did I start to have doubts as to whether it would fit in the bathroom... in the meantime a friend snapped a leg (of the bath not his) off lifting it down from the truck and it came to rest in our hallway for a couple of years. resting on it's remaining three legs because of course it wouldn't fit where the bath was. Oh no we needed to reposition the whole bathroom. As with so many bargains it turned out not to be one after all!
The high level cistern was rescued from an old loo at the end of the garden and shotblasted and painted to match the bath. It had the original makers name somewhere in Dorchester embossed on it so it seemed only right to make use of it.
So there you go, that's downstairs.
 
I'll take you upstairs another day!


11 comments:

  1. That's the sort of thing I would do, bath bargain that is! Your previous home looks lovely, we pour so much of ourselves into our home don't we! Ada :)

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  2. Is all fascinating, I feel the same way about our cottage with left in Cornwall, there will always be a little piece of us left behind
    Thea x

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  3. you worked your hard magic on that house i can see- what lovely old beams in the brick work and those doors leading out to the garden- really lovely and cosy, homely looking x

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  4. Wow! Its gorgeous Would you come and give advice on my house?
    We had one of those rockery things in our previous twenty years ago, that went the same way as yours!
    Julie xxxxxxx

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  5. WOW, so beautiful! love your chapel doors in the kitchen. You have done a wonderful job renovating it :)

    Bee happy x

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  6. What a fabulous house, how could you bear to leave?!!!!

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  7. What a gorgeous transformation! I love your blog!
    Tammy xx

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  8. It's all lovely but those chapel doors really are stunning. You must've been gutted to leave them behind! x

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  9. I'm very impressed how wonderful the house now looks like.
    You did a really good job.
    It looks so cosy and beautiful.
    Sissi

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  10. I'm glad that all your efforts paid off, Jelly Jam. I like the cottage garden outside the chapel doors - the garden is really pretty. Good job on painting the high level cistern! It certainly goes well with the rest of the bathroom. :)

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