Spot the Difference!

This is the reason for the lack of blogging recently! This little transformation was meant to have taken 3 weeks, that was what we were quoted but yet here we are a the end of week 6 and it's almost there! I say almost, the actual structural work is complete and the builders have moved out but we are yet to decorate and there is a little cleaning to do!!! The 'box' that is now stuck to our house permanently was a bit of a shock first and is much bigger than we thought it would be. It's taking some getting used to but the space we have created makes it very worthwhile.
This was how the rooms looked upstairs, we had the loft converted 11 years ago and it's suited our needs brilliantly but now the children are having their bedrooms upstairs we felt the sloping ceilings would, in time, not be ideal.

The study, looking in from the door, we had 2 desks in there, Mark's is just to the right of the picture.

and looking back from the desk, this also shows the size of the old landing.

Across the landing was the guest room.

Looking back from the bed. (we always kind of felt this looked like a bit of a corridor, see what we mean about the slope!)

Finally we had an en-suite shower room to the guest room, although this was sneaked into the apex we actually quite liked it's quirkiness!


Once we'd decided to go ahead and build a dormer we asked a local builder to come and have a look, he really inspired us and we were really excited to see the architects plan! There were a couple of 'tweaks' to the original plan during the building process, the chimney breast is actually positioned incorrectly and is actually more central in the study and the door of bedroom 3 is opposite bedroom 4's door.

The rooms were so much bigger than we expected and it was a bonus to fit an extra room in! So that was it! Full steam ahead!
Week one was meant to be the dirtiest week and the start of work was planned to coincide with us being away on holiday. Only we got a text on our next to last day saying we couldn't go home! We arrived home from holiday later than expected (more about that in my holiday blog posts to follow) so dropped Charlie and Courtney off at my parents in law and came home to have a look. We were both very excited to see the progress made but were in despair to find our home covered in tarpaulin and upstairs basically being an empty shell with no boiler, so no heat or hot water and generally an absolute tip! We picked up a few bits we needed up and went back to spend the night at Sylvia and Hughie's with the children. Next morning we brought Charlie up to school and saw the builders. That was when we found out about the plans been drawn incorrectly and the steel beam needed to support the whole structure went right through the chimney breast! The builders lost 3 days work until the corrections could be made. In the end we spent 10 nights at Sylvia and Hughie's, it was very kind of them to put us up for that long! Suddenly to have 4 extra people in their house couldn't have been easy! We finally moved back home the day the boiler went back in and just put up with the building work going on around us. The builders were excellent though, very friendly and considerate, that helped! So here we are almost there! Here is a collage of progress shots!

I will post some after photos once the decoration is done but be warned, it is being done in stages so could take a while, LOL! Generally though we are truly delighted with our new space, Charlie and Courtney can't wait to move up! I'm not surprised, their bedrooms are bigger than ours! They'll have so much fun with lots of space to play in! Charlie's room is being decorated first, he's chosen a football theme with Preston North End bedding, I think Mark will end up camping out up there, LOL!