A room with five corners

Even before we moved into our present home (we're not yet at the second anniversary) we knew that we would have a big job on our hands. Whilst we loved the house, the location, the views from the windows, and much else, we knew for certain that we would not be able to live with the interior decor. It was tired and dated, representing an era that we had fallen out of love with years ago, if ever, so it would have to go. But we also knew that transforming the house decor was not going to happen overnight. It would be a lengthy process that we would have to tackle one room at a time, maybe on rainy days when nothing else took priority.

Already described in these pages are some of our transformational efforts, the priority being the areas of the house where we spend most time during daylight hours, places where we could not avoid viewing that which we disliked. I am, perhaps, more tolerant of the aged wallpaper than most but I live with someone who is clearly not, which means that whenever I left the house I was likely to find another room being stripped when I returned home. Each room, as it turns out, had multiple layers of wallpaper, each representing a different generation or perhaps a different householder's ideas on what looks good. Removing each layer, sometimes one at a time, requires patience and care, especially if we intend to paint the walls exposed beneath, but

what is revealed once a wall has been stripped can be quite interesting. Often we find guiding words written by the individual who put the first layer of paper on the wall some sixty years ago. These notes will be lost forever once the first covering layer of paint is applied so the photo here is of archeological interest as it is the only record.

The room here is our dining room, so described because we use it mostly at breakfast, lunch time and for when we have visitors, so it has taken a while for us to note that this room, along with several others in our house, has five internal corners! Realisation came about quite suddenly as I was applying sealant to each corner to smooth over the ragged joins in the plasterboard exposed after the wallpaper had been peeled off. (Paint will hide most things but any gaps need to be thin enough or else the result will look unprofessionally untidy.) I now realise that the five corner phenomenon is actually quite common, if one applies a little thought. In our dining room the rear of a chimney breast intrudes in from the adjoining living room (where the fire opening is filled with a small wood burning stove) and this takes space away and changes the shape of the room from a standard rectangle to a slightly more irregular shape. It has this shape in common with our kitchen and with one of our bedrooms, each of these having intrusions created long ago for different purposes. In fact the kitchen had no less than six internal corners when we moved in and only our hard work and the drive to modernize what was there before has brought this down to a more sensible five. I did wonder whether this five-cornered phenomenon should have been pointed out when we bought the house although I doubt whether it would have put us off buying.

Coming back to the dining room, we start with the now smooth walls, stripped and  sanded as best we can so the paint can be rolled on. We made our colour choice for the room and after masking off everything we do not want painted we go for it... and the effect is transformational. Any recollection of the brown stripey wallpaper is now lost to the world. Next in line is the carpet, a dated patterned thing that has now become splattered with spilt paint as a result of us doing the walls. We could not wait to rip it up. We knew from previous experience that there might be horrors hidden beneath the tired and crumbling carpet underlay, possibly even messages tucked away from view again, but sadly there is nothing exciting to see this time, just a few loose boards to secure and some holes to fill up. Some of these holes were made to allow the water pipes for a radiator to emerge from underneath... before a new radiator was fitted in a different position.

The plan for the floor in this room mirrors what we have done elsewhere as we are great believers in laminate, interlocking boards laid across a room to form a clean, smooth surface, more commonly with a woodgrain pattern on top. (An ugly patterned carpet stands no chance in our house.) We collect the laminate from a local supplier and then stagger up to the house carrying the heavy boxes, laying them down carefully ready for action. A very thin expanded foam underlay goes down then the first line of boards is laid along the longest wall. Working across the room one row at a time is very satisfying, each one covering up more of the floorboards until finally the opposite wall is reached and some lengthy sawing is required to fit the last strip.

Once the floor is laid the furniture can go back in, not least of which is our new sofa which doubles as a bed if needed. Suddenly the room is transformed into a place where we can sit and admire our handiwork and push the memories of the horrible patterned carpet and the stripey walls out of our minds. There is a fresh, clean feel to the room and, something we didn't expect, a resonance that was not there before. The dining room is now a music room, the faintest of echoes adding much to our musical efforts.