The Attic Renovation - Part I

Ok, slight change of plan this year. I was planning on doing the hallway, stairs and landing. Instead, the attic will be done first. To be honest, whilst this isn't the main reason, it does make sense to do this first as I would have needed to replace the stairs up to the attic as part of the landing renovation anyway, and also get one of the attic walls done too. 

So today I made a start.

Do you remember my attic?

Beautiful isn't it? ;-) Well it serves two purposes really. It's my bedroom but also tends to become a bit of traditional dumping ground too as I'd rather the stuff was up there, out of sight, than sat around the rest of the house. The renovation won't be quick and whilst some of this takes place I still need the room as a bedroom. So I started today by removing all of that delightful and modern fitted bedroom furniture...

S'gone! (as my middle child would say)

It was about lunchtime by this point, my bed was covered in the contents of the wardrobes and drawers, the floor was covered in bits of wood, rubbish, tools, etc. I was covered in dust and grime.

Now, I have 2 attics, one pictured above, and another smaller attic over the back of the house. There are also eaves along the left of the main attic that used to house the water tanks (now decommissioned), along with a significant amount of rubbish and who knows what else left by the previous owner. The plan is to remove all of that, board the eaves, board the smaller attic, and provide access to both areas which can then be used to store all the general 'loft stuff' that most people have. The main attic can then just be a bedroom. 

So, in order to start sorting the small attic I needed to shift my bed to the other side of the room, and then sort out everything that was in the room into either 'Loft stuff' or 'Bedroom stuff'. With a lot of effort, cleaning, sneezing, cursing, bruising and a little mishap I managed to create a liveable space by tea time...

Small beginnings.

Close your eyes and you can almost forget where you are!

I even cleaned that window for the first time ever.

That's the 'Loft Stuff' waiting to move to it's new home on the other side of that wall.

Who needs wardrobes?!

Obviously that bike is ornamental and will shortly make its way to ebay or even freecycle.

So not bad for one day I think. Admittedly I can barely move on the landing or hallway at present but that's tomorrow's job. I'm not really sure why I it took me so long to get rid of those cupboards but at least it's done now anyway. I think I have earned a nice big glass of wine today.