A wallpaper time capsule...

When we stripped all the old plasterboard off the stud walls in the old part of the house we found a treasure trove of wallpapers trapped beneath....

In the hall there was this very yellow floral number.

This green and gold glitzy number was in the living room.



Some more sparkle, this time a leafy design with lots of silver dots.



This one was a little more subtle and one of the only ones that wasn't floral.  Its a sort of chain design with a touch of gold.



This one looks quite tropical!



This one looks quite hawaiian  or surfy!



These roses were in the dining room and are quite dramatic when seen on a whole wall scale!



I can't remember where this was but it's very pink...



This one would give Cath Kidston a run for her money!



This is the last one we found and it's quite delicate with pink cornflowers on a white background.



All the stud walls in the old part of our house are made of tongue and groove.  They had been papered with old newspapers first - I think probably to stop the ridges of the wood from showing through on the wall paper.

We've stripped the wallpaper right back and have repaired bits of the wood that were rotten or simply missing.  There's still lots of work to do before we can paint but I can't help dreaming of what colours to use!  Having stripped all the wallpaper off I'm definitely going to steer clear of putting anymore up, paint all the way!

I've no idea what date any of the wallpapers are from, do leave me a comment if you recognise any of them or know when they might be from!

Renovations!

The old part of our house was built in 1918 and now that we have a new extension (which we pretty much live in) we really notice how cold the old bit feels in comparison.  So now the new bit is more or less finished, we have started to turn our attention to the old bit.

The first thing we needed to do was take down a few walls and strip off all the old plasterboard and ceilings....

This was the hall after the first evening of demolishing.  The hall is going completely and becoming part of the living room, which is how it was originally.

Thankfully we have a handy helper who we can put to work doing all the tidying up!

We had to move all the contents of the old house into the new bit and now it looks like a very disorganised junk shop!

Once we removed the top layer of plasterboard we uncovered a treasure trove of wallpapers from throughout the 20th Century (a detailed post of the wallpaper time capsule to follow!)

There is a new roof to go on and lots of new insulation to keep the place nice and warm, it's a shame we have to cover up the lovely structure of the roof but it will be worth it for the extra heat!



Our stud walls were all originally tongue and groove so we have taken the wood off and hope to be able to reuse it as much as possible.






We decided to reinstate the wall between the front room and the old dining room at the back but rather than just re tongue and groove it all we thought a window would look nice.  We had a look on gumtree and managed to find this one which just happens to fit almost perfectly in the gap that used to be the hall!  It has a broken pane but I'm hoping it won't be too hard to fix.

Although we have been spending most evenings and weekends demolishing, pulling out nails and stripping wallpaper, a tasty hot chocolate and the promise of a much warmer house makes it all worthwhile!