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The lounge demands a complete change to the layout. The 1970s three seater settee no longer dominates the brick wall. It had to be destroyed to allow me to remove it while working alone. When a hospital bed was to be brought in for my dying wife. Who was still in hospital at that point. With only a week left on this earth.
This is one of her fastigiate, red oaks. We spent hours harvesting acorns from public car parks. She would grow then on in pots until they could be planted out in the garden.
I now have up to four comfortable armchairs for seating. One of the four is spoken for as an upstairs TV chair. The dining table remains a dumping ground but has now been rotated 90º. Then pushed against the left wall. I'm not completely sure I like it there but it breaks the mould.
It could go along the right wall under the three southern windows. This would place the table much nearer the kitchen. If that really mattered. I don't ever eat at the table. I eat upstairs on a tray on my lap. Either at the computer or watching TV. The table is too tall for a keyboard. So can't easily double as a computer table.
If the dining table was moved to the kitchen it would require the fridge freezer be moved to make room. A large table in a kitchen against a blank wall? This desperately needs a new window. Time and expense are against this idea for the moment. It would be claustrophobic without a view. Do I still need an antique pine kitchen table and four bodgers elm, dining chairs? A smaller, square table could be found at a charity shop. The rickety dining chairs don't get enough exercise to be a problem in the short term.
The double bookshelf units have the capacity for all the large and modern books. Except that the shelving units look awful stacked. Do I still want a room full of books? I no longer look at books. Except for rare searches for a reference.
An Internet search can usually answer most questions. Books do not have a search box. Nor are they updated. My near eyesight is declining. Small print is becoming very difficult even with a magnifying glass. Of which I have three in fixed stations. Or I would instantly lose them.
I have a large, dark oak bookshelf. Which presently acts as storage for boxed china and glass. Providing a room divider upstairs. In the open triangle against the chimney. Beside my computer chair. I can just see over the bookshelf when seated at the computer. For a view of the top half of the new bedroom window. If I moved this large and heavy bookshelf back downstairs. It would literally open up access to the bedroom. On both sides of the central chimney. The head of my bed is against the chimney. Dividing the bedroom into two.
My wife's bed is still there. Pushed against the left sloping attic ceiling. Without it, there would be room for all my clothes. Without the untidy rail standing out like a sore thumb over on the right. The rack was actually a good idea at the time. To allow me to discard the two, poorly accessible wardrobes. Containing clothes which hadn't been looked at for over two decades. All of my wife's clothes and most of mine have gone to charity shops.
I now have lots of removal boxes containing books. They are heavy and there are enough of them to dominate the lounge floor. They can only be dragged across the carpet with difficulty. This makes furniture moving an added burden. Repeated handling is hot work and a bore. So I need a proper plan before I even start rearranging anything. It's not just a matter of shoving and pulling things around. As if dragged by a cursor on a screen. Now there's an idea... 🙄
8.00 Time for a walk.
It took most of the distance to rid my back of pain. Several flocks of geese went over. In random directions.
Back to measuring the lounge for a totally opaque room design app Planner 5D by Microsoft. Sod it! I don't have enough hours left to learn their nerdiocy. It will have to be a physical drawing with scaled, movable furniture rectangles of paper. Or, I could use PhotoFiltre. Let's try that instead.
None of this is [probably] remotely interesting to my readers. However, it is vitally important to me. Firstly, to record the attempt to bring order to the present total chaos. To save me wasted time and effort. To give myself a public goal. Which gives me the necessary impetus to complete the task.
The lounge is a completely fresh start for me. With the only limits the physical boundaries of the room's own dimensions. Drawing it as an empty box gives me new insights into its space and potential. Wiping away 26 years of habitual acceptance of the former status quo.
The previous furniture is no longer a fixed starting point. It is all potentially disposable. Except for the new/old armchairs. Which are much more flexible in their possible arrangements. Than the old and battered, 3-seater settee/sofa.
I don't see myself moving downstairs to watch TV in the evenings. This would require wall mounting the TV. With reflections off all the bright, southern windows to contend with. Curtains are flexible but a bore.
It is always warmer upstairs. For good and evil. Being cooler downstairs, during hot summers, would be a blessing. I slept downstairs during the recent hot weather. Now I have the new stove. To keep me warm in winter downstairs. This would probably increase log consumption. Because I would be warmer upstairs for the same heat output.
I have had plans for warming the kitchen and bathroom from the stove in the lounge. This would require sealing the two exterior doors properly. Replacing the [rear] main entrance door is a very high priority. There are daylight gaps all around it! A porch would be great but would require a lot of work when I am still rather busy elsewhere. The double-glazed, double greenhouse doors, to the front hall, could be better sealed without too much effort. Thicker sponge draught strip would do it.
Can a single stove warm 100 m^2 on 1.5 floors? The old stove certainly couldn't. That was severely handicapped by water heating. It couldn't do that and warm the house at the same time. The new [modern] wood stove is amazing in its output. Nor does it have to heat water.
I measured the kitchen for the dining table. It would overlap the sink. Not a good idea at all! A tiny table with a chair or two by a new window will be a future possibility for the kitchen. It is still very much an unfinished project. I was looking at moving the hinges to the other side of the kitchen door to the front hall. Then the door could fold back against the hall wall. At the moment it obscures a potentially useful corner opposite the working surface. I had electrical sockets installed in that corner for future development.
I have just had an SMS. To say my entrance hall, pastry coloured, floor tiles have arrived at the builder's merchants. I have been putting off laying the self-levelling compound. There are loads of YT videos on the technique. Years ago I used it on the kitchen floor but with limited success. I didn't have enough compound! It ended up a bit bumpy in places. You only get one go to get it right!
15.00 59F/15C. Very mild. I have brought home my hall tiles and some shopping.
I lit the stove with one log on the kindling and let it burn itself out. Indoor temperatures, the adjoining doors to the kitchen open rose by 2F.
Dinner was one of my awful omelettes. I had chicken, mushrooms and eggs to use up. All of them should have been eaten days ago. After a good quarter of an hour in the frying pan I poured the beaten eggs and a little milk over the top. The result was a mess but fine to eat. The image is even worse thanks to the flash catching the steam. I have boosted the contrast to cut through to the hideous reality.
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