Well here we are again. It’s December already and this year I have decided to make it about the best of the Mad House. This is partly because everyone’s too busy to read blogs at the moment and partly because I was looking up an old post the other day and I thought: there’s a lot of stuff here including new designers and interesting stories and the like, and it all deserves to have another 15 minutes. After all, as much as I know you all adore the Mad House (!), you probably don’t have time to check in every day so many of these posts will be new to you. And if there’re not then it’s a chance to catch up with some old favourites. Such as this:
Musings on a Loft
I have been thinking about my loft recently. I was interviewed about the house last week and asked if there was anything I would change. Then a new friend came for lunch and, as it was her first visit, I showed her around. She asked the same question. The answer both times was that I wish we had converted the loft when we were doing all the work.
When we moved in, as has been well documented on the blog, the house was two rental flats which we converted into a single dwelling. Leaving the sticky issue of budgets aside we didn’t really have a plan for the loft.
There were too many stairs for it to function successfully as a guest room – particularly when our most frequent guests are our parents. Neither of us had any real desire to make the loft into the master suite – we lived under the eaves in our last house and having once banged my head so hard that I literally saw stars ( I kid you not. I didn’t even know that was a real thing, but I can personally vouch for the fact that it doesn’t just happen in cartoons. Mind you I didn’t get the cheeping birds flying round. They definitely made that bit up). Anyway, no eaves for us.
And, my husband pointed out sagely, he didn’t fancy handing the space over to a future teenager who would go galumphing up the stairs after ten pints of lager and spent half the night jumping up and down on the floorboards above our heads while listening to something unspeakable that will pass for music in 2015.
So, we abandoned plans for the loft and went skiing instead. Well, not quite, as it turned out the budget was pretty stretched as it was and we couldn’t really find the money for a loft conversion.
Only then Himself started working from home a bit more. And so he needed a desk in the spareroom. Which had, by now, been slightly taken over by tweens wanting to play x-box. And was needed as a place for them to watch their unspeakable television programmes about cars and swearing comedians. The days when they dutifully left the sitting room at 7pm to go to bed leaving you with a glass of red and Channel 4 news (all right Eastenders) are long gone… you parents of youngsters, you think it’s tough now – you wait until they want to stay up later than you do, pinch half your dinner and think the sitting room belongs to them.
Suddenly, converting the loft was looking like a necessity rather than an indulgence. But, as we still haven’t got the money, it remains largely a fantasy at this point. But it’s my current favourite fantasy and I fully intend to indulge it, as these images show.
In my head, it will be vast (like the tardis, which is bigger on the inside, it will, naturally, be somehow bigger than the footprint of the house). It will be a studio with huge glass windows at the back. There will storage, two desks (his and hers? Let’s be honest probably mine and mine. He rushed off to the spareroom … ya peaked too soon mate, soz). There will be a small bathroom (so that if the house is sold it functions as a bedroom with an en suite for sales purposes). A sofa, for those vital moments when you need to have a regroup and a think. Possibly lying down. A swing – because every home should have an indoor swing.
And it will be white, and lofty and slightly industrial – in a glamorous way – of course. In the meantime, I’ll keep pinning the pictures and dreaming that one day my loft will come.
UPDATE: We are doing the loft. Hurray and Yay! Sometime in 2015 this fantasy loft will be mine. All mine.
Ah, lofts! Yes, I do a bit of head-banging (mostly when I’m still still waking after bath-time .. and bend to reach for a bangle or two (bangle-eave cupboard door horribly near veluxe) .. but ..
It’s all white. In both senses of ‘the words.’ 3 aspects. Sunny beyond anywhere else in the house. Two floors up from noisy TV (no kids, but lovely not to have to ‘nag’ – NAG? Women don’t nag! – if I retire early and Mr Him needs Ed and his noisy, oily motor programme on very loudly.
We have a teeny en suite. All MINE. (His man-space lives on the middle floor – with messy soaps/slippers’n’all – yippee!)
I think I may just go and live up our loft. Wear pink lipstick. Grow a blonde bouffant. Get a fluffy white pooch and dictate romantic prose whilst languishing against my floaty white, French headboard (the one he loathes with a passion.)
From now on, I shall be mainly known as Barbara. (I know you’ve kept up ..)
I have totally kept up! I’m coming too.. In my loft I shall be known as Eleanor and I may be slightly medieval in my attitude to intruders.
I feel your lofty pangs. We live in an old mill and we’re working our way up (quite literally) to doing ours. One day though, and with a swing… genius!
Oh how I loved this post and agree with you totally on the fantasy loft. One day, when the children leave, we will make our 3 bedrooms in the attic into one large luxurious area just as you describe. Of course it will miraculously have doubled in size by then and manage to be a stylish multifunctional room and totally cool too. Don’t stop dreaming…
I too had a chuckle at your comments. We have just had 2 fly the nest and though we miss them it’s great to get the sitting room to ourselves. Just 3 left to go now! Those photos are beautiful and I would have any of those spaces in a moment
Thank you for the laugh regarding teenager bedtimes and their past-times. In our house one of the big time passers is dunking on the mini basketball net in his bedroom (which happens to be right above the kitchen) I see the wisdom in not giving over the loft to the kids.
We’d have to raise the roof to convert our loft but if we ever do, and it’s on my fantasy list too, I’d so love a loft like the first image with those windows as the roof. That would be heaven for me.