House Renovations: Snug

The room we like to call the 'snug' is at the front of the house, to the right as you come through the front door. Originally the room ran the full length of the house; this shot shows the end of the room looking out through the front window, with the door into the hallway just out of shot to the rightwhile this photo shows the other end of the room, with the window looking out onto the back gardenbut we decided when we went for open plan in the rest of the downstairs space that we would like a 'cosy', and preferably child-free, room where we could sit on a winter's evening with the fire on, reading our books and/or watching tv - a romantic notion, don't you think?!

Within days of the builders starting work on the house, they had stripped away the horrendous stone covering the chimney breastand built a wall to make the room much more 'snug'-like

Then it was a case of removing the rather over-sized Bath stone fire surround (currently residing in the garage until we get round to listing it on eBay) and the electric firefitting a new doorplastering the walls (doesn't the fire look tiny now?!)painting the room whiteand building a huge, ugly, concrete hearth. Huge and ugly in order for it to conform to building regs which state it must be a certain height, certain depth, certain blah blah and blah-di-blah.Then pop in a vintage (1930s or 50s perhaps?) grate found in the garage

oh, and box in some ugly heating pipespop some new skirting on and fit some new carpet in gorgeous burgundy stripes - Carousel Cord by Brintons. Hubby scored a major steal with this carpet after a little bit of research on the internet/via good old eBay. The RRP is £80 per sq.m - ouch, with a capital 'O'. Totally out of our price range. However, there was a company in Leeds (I think) selling it for just £25 per sq.m. as they could only supply narrowish widths meant for stairs and landings. Our carpet fitter assured us this wouldn't be a problem as any join would be easily hidden by the stripes; and he was right - we don't even know where the join is (there's only one as the carpet supplied wasn't all that narrow). It just goes to show how much money can be saved with a little time spent on the tinterweb.And then it was time to start moving in the furniture. This room is still very much a work in progress, and is also a little bit of a dumping ground for the time being. We've moved the bureau in, but that's about it; we really need to buy/acquire a couple of comfy chairs, a chest of drawers (or similar) to put a tv on, and some more book storage. Not to mention some curtains - I'm thinking burgundy velvet to pick up on the colour in the carpet and to make the room feel even snuggier! Oh, and we need a standard lamp, or side lamps and we need to hang some pictures. This will call for another post at a later date...