Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Bedrooms

Traditionally these houses have two decent size bedrooms on the 1st floor (2nd floor for all you in North America) and one very small room/office/nursery. The master bedroom is traditionally at the front of the house and has the bay window that continues up from the living room below. Beside it, also facing the front is the small bedroom which can range as large as 9x6 feet to as small as 5x4 feet. I think ours is 5 x 8, but we may lose a few feet if we extend into the loft. The staircase takes up a bit more room. The second bedroom I have always found the nicest in these Victorian terraced houses. They look out onto the backyard and always have a peaceful feel (no cars). Our second bedroom has a nice built in closet (with a boiler inside!). Facing the door. The bedrooms will be the easiest rooms along with the living room to redo. The floorboards need exposing and recovering, the windows replacing, the walls stripping, and the original fireplaces put back in. The chimney from both the dining room and living room extend up into the two large bedrooms where many houses still retain the original coal fireplace facade as a feature. These bedroom fireplaces are smaller.

3 comments:

Sarah said...

Are you going to try and get high efficient gas reproduction fireplaces? Or are you going with wood burning? Does London have a wood burning law?

Mama Bear said...

i love the high ceilings and big windows!

michal (W.I.T.W.I.M.) said...

For the bedrooms it will probably just be decorative. In about 30 houses I saw that were the same era and layout, none had working fireplaces in the bedrooms. They are coal burning with the high, small grate.

There is gas piped into the dining room fireplace and we will probably pipe it into the living room fireplace as well.

There are burning by-laws in London. You can't produce smoke. Merton is out council and here is the link http://www.merton.gov.uk/living/environment/pollution/air/smokecontrolareas.htm
(£1000 fine)

A wood burning fire is really a Canadian thing, I am discovering. I didn't see any and the only one I have seen in London was rented out by Canadians who just burned wood anyway.