Last time I wrote about the dining room we had gone from this…

To this…

We have continued work on the dining room since, with the added help of Mum and Tom (thank you we love you), when we were on annual leave in October. What a way to spend a holiday!

My lovely Mum won’t be happy about me publishing that photo (sorry Mum) but it’s the only one that shows the original door into the kitchen. We have since had the builder move it to the left. Moving the doorway significantly changes the layout of the kitchen, and will gain us loads more worktop space when we refit it. We moved the door first so we could get the dining room finished. I didn’t notice Tom was in the kitchen until we uploaded the photos!

The builder then levelled the floor for us with a latex based compound. The floor had been covered in the original quarry tiles, but they were in really bad condition and there was a concrete track right across the room covering an old gas pipe. When they were originally laid they would have been put straight on top of the concrete floor as it was setting, so they were well and truly attached. Removing the cracked ones to replace them would have caused too much damage. We had considered tiling over the top with similar tiles from a local reclamation yard. However after living without a carpet in there for a while, we realised it was quite cold, so we decided to put laminate down. The quarry tiles also sucked a lot of light out of this already dark room. I guess one of the benefits of renovating on a budget is you get the chance to change your mind about plans and time to think things over while you are busy saving!

The flooring is called Richmond Oak Floorboard Effect Laminate from Homebase. We managed to buy it during a 20% event, and the underlay had 50% off so we went for the best they had as supposedly this can really affect the feel of the floor. I’m glad we did as it is so much warmer in there now. My friend Jenny has this flooring in her shop (House Interiors & Gifts in Knutsford) and she gets lots of comments on how real it looks. It was really handy to see a large amount of it at once. It had lots of rave reviews on the home base website. We didn’t find it the easiest thing to lay, it was very frustrating until we got the hang of it, however we haven’t ever done this before, and had to cut all the pieces by hand. I’m sure if you had the right kit, and knew what you were doing, it would be nice and quick. We have painted the whole room in dulux trade super matt white. Mainly to seal the walls, ceiling and plasterwork in some good quality paint before we decided on a colour.

I wasn’t sure about the white on the fireplace at first, I felt it looked a bit harsh against the oak beam, but Jus and Tom both like it. Jus likes the juxtaposition of the fresh, clean white against the old, battered wood and I have to admit I am coming round to her way of thinking. Once we had a few things back in here it looks really bright and I am glad we tried plain old white first. 

No wood burner yet, it appears there is all sorts of new legislation since I last got one and we might have to have the chimney lined, boo! It appears you can charge a fortune to climb on someones roof and drop a big slinky down their chimney. I am sure it’s not quite as easy as this and as I am petrified of heights I will not be trying. However Tom is not scared of heights so maybe he will have to get up there! As always I will stand somewhere safe and shout unhelpful instructions and panic. Lining the chimney has added a significant amount to the budget for this room so the wood burner may have to wait. Thankfully as the fire proof board is in place it isn’t too draughty in this room. There’s plenty more to do in this room, and much more to write about, but this post is massive now and I don’t want to bore you to death! x