Let the renovations begin...again !

Old houses present their own challenges and Number Ten is no different. There's always something to do or change and more often than not, one job leads to another...and another.

This is the third time our bedroom has been "modified".

The first was when I bought the house over 10 years ago...my funds were limited so I spent it on what I thought to be the most important things...the house was re-stumped, an essential job before any other work was done and replaced the drooping ceilings and cornices throughout. I also had new doors made for the wardrobes and had the floors stripped and polished.

The second round was replacing all the plaster on the bedroom walls and repainting the room.

...and now, it's bedroom renovation, Mark III, with new built in robes being fitted at the opposite end of the room so we have more room for the bed and bedside tables.

Work began on this project at the weekend...

Hi MONT....

The doorway had to be made smaller so the area where the robe is going would be deep enough.

MONT removed the 820cm door and door frame, packed it out and then called in the heavy artillery. He got a builder mate, Paul to come and hang the new 720cm door. MONT can do it, but says what would've taken him all day, took Paul less than an hour. Paul has his own company and MONT does some work with him. Paul has won awards for his renovations, not that hanging a door at Number 10 will add to his impressive portfolio.

What changing the doorway also meant was that the old fibrous plaster in the hallway had to be removed because new plasterboard is thicker and we wouldn't have been able to seamlessly hang the new next to the old without the join showing.

This small part of the hallway's the only part of the house that hasn't had new plasterboard put in, so it's good that we've had to replace the old stuff.

The walls have now been insulated for the new plaster to be hung. Once the robes go in we can shuffle everything around so the other end of the bedroom can be demolished and the walls can be plastered there as well.

Then it's up to me to paint everything again. Luckily, that's one job I don't mind