cottage renovation...the living room (part 1)

With the bedrooms freshly painted and restored, if not totally finished, it was time to tackle the 
living room.  This transformation is going to amaze you, it still amazes me!  We have gone from dirty and unloved to fresh and cosy.  Love it!!  See the before and after progress below.

Like many old cottages ours was divided into tiny little rooms, teeny living room with a weird hatch through to the kitchen area, accessed via a door in the passage in the corner of both rooms.  Weird, and hard to live in.  There was also a doors from the entrance area into the main bedroom, who knows why as there is another in the passage.

It all seemed so simple: knock down the wall between the living and kitchen, close up the extra door to the bedroom, lots and lots of fresh paint.
In reality it was a lot of hard work.  This little house was filthy and I really do mean decades of dirt and neglect that just don't show up on the before photographs.  Those curtains were just dusty, sun eaten rags, and the crackes between the cornices and the ceiling and walls just don't show up.

Before painting each wall required lots of filling, and the cornices took more tubes of Gap Filler than you can imagine.  That dirty mint paint just wouldn't say goodbye, lots of coats of paint.

We got a chippy to take down the wall, $500 very well spent!  But the edges and ceiling had to be sealed and plastered.  We still haven't quite finished this off, there are still a few gaps to be fixed and it needs to be primed and painted.   Look how dirty the paint is below!!

And looking back from the kitchen through the hatch.  All that yellow pine panelling - YUCK!

How amazing is the space with the wall gone!!  You can see I have started painting the pine a lovely fresh white, more on that later.

Still a lot to do, lots more white paint required, but a huge improvement already.  The windows in the kitchen area are flooded with north light, with the wall gone the living room is twice as light and warmer than it ever was before.  You can just see the gorgeous old Aga range in the kitchen, can't wait until the rest of the kitchen, and especially those tile, is white and bright too. 

I will be posting more of the living room soon.  See the girls shared bedroom here, super sweet and done on a very tight budget!