Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

neverdespairgirl

PasturesNew wrote: »

I've just never known people that had people round for meals (aka dinner parties), often people I knew didn't even have their own place (living in garages/bedsits/with parents). I've just never managed to be able to afford the sort of friends who deserve me

Dinner parties aren't quite the same as having people round - the latter is less formal, and often just happens if people turn up.

lostinrates

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Cakes, sloe gin, jelly......

I used to bake a lot, I haven' recently though I don't ice like your Mama though! I wouldn't have the skill or the patience!

neverdespairgirl

Me neither. Sponge cakes with butter cream icing are my standby for cakes

PasturesNew

In the studio my stuff smelt of everything I was cooking as the whole floorspace in its entirety was 16' square.

What doors would/wouldn't work would depend on the space either side of the doorway, on both sides of the wall. So I won't contribute as I don't know what your doorframe and surround look like.

LydiaJ

Thanks for the input.

At the moment there is no door frame between the hall and kitchen. There is an archway with a rounded top, with the textured wall paper continuing round onto the inward facing surface of the arch. Putting doors of any kind there - sliding, bi-fold, whatever - would involve squaring the top of the arch - the top of the doorframe would need to be lower than the top of the arch but higher than the point where it starts curving in, so it would involve some carving out as well as some filling in. This is not a doorway that's been converted to an arch. It was originally just a wall, and the archway was put there when the kitchen was knocked through to the hall and the original doorway from the dining room to the kitchen bricked up. (The hall was originally a study, when the front door was on the other side of the house.)

This is definitely a more expensive job than I can contemplate at the moment, but it's interesting to play in my head with ideas about what I might do if and when I can afford it. A curtain, on the other hand, even if it needed washing every so often, might be a cheap stop-gap that would at least stop the bedrooms smelling of chips, until such time as I have the money to reshape the hole in the wall and put doors there.

Sliding doors would fit nicely in the space, but I'd only want them if they would slide effortlessly to and fro without sticking, jolting, or wobbling. Are these issues endemic to all sliding doors (interior ones, not patio ones), or only the ones it has been my misfortune to encounter?

I've never lived anywhere with bi-fold doors. Do they behave themselves? There are some multifold doors at work, which can be a bit of a pig to get shut properly, but perhaps that is because they are colossal, so maybe normal sized ones would do what they were told easily.

Having lived here for a few months, I am beginning to find it quite natural to open the front door and see a narrow corridor of conservatory (with view of dilapidated garden shed and compost bin) leading into the conservatory proper, and then double back on myself to get into the hall from the conservatory. However, I can remember the disconcerting and not-very-welcoming impression I got from it when I first arrived to view the place, and eventually I'd like to change it.

I'm also aware that my surveyor thought that the unconventional entrance brought the value of the house down - which was great for me buying it. So it would be a good idea to sort it out to add value to the house for when I eventually sell it. But if I'm going to do that then I'd rather do it as soon as I can afford it, so as to get the benefit of it for myself. I have a friend at work who put up with various things that irritated her about her house, and then fixed them all when she moved out and began letting the house. Having put up with a grotty bathroom for ages, she was a bit disappointed not to end up using the lovely new bathroom she put in. I don't want to do that with my entrance.

However, I haven't got money for anything other than minor stuff for now (apart from the solar panels, which are being paid for by an addition to my mortgage). I am told I will probably get quite a bit of extra money when late-nearly-ex's compensation claim is finally settled, but that could be years yet, so for now I'm just dreaming.

lostinrates

LydiaJ wrote: »

so for now I'm just dreaming.

me too. Its good to get lots of it out of one's system though I think. Ideas evolve.

e.g. all our plans decided, and time given our ''main'' bathroom evolved again when dh pointed out that being above the ''secret dwarf room'' meant we could have a sunken bath in there. Its going to be a smallish room, so this would mean, for example, it could have quite a spa like feel yet have a shower over bath that could make it feel more not less ''lux'' and potentially feel a lot more spacious.

Now, whether we do that in the future or not who knows, but we will now have some years to work it through the system.

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

Bifold doors/door?

We have some (which are hideous but will be one day replaced with attractive ones) between ''sitting room'' or ''morning room'' and what will be ''dining hall''. They are very useful. Right now I'm in sitting room with the doors open so dogs feel with me but are not with me (atm that room is their ''bedroom'').

If they're hideous, you could cut interesting small pictures from magazines and chuck them into a shoebox... then every couple of months get some see-through glue and stick them on.... by Xmas you'd have them covered with pretty bits.

PasturesNew

For the archway, you could think about the potential of fitting doors into it, then the space above it could be a fixed semi circle of glass, to let the light through and save you having to butcher the actual archway.

PasturesNew

Brad Pitt's just phoned ... he's popping down to see me and thinks he might try to get some work done while he's around
http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/9134068.Brad_Pitt_to_film_zombie_tale_off_Falmouth/

LydiaJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

For the archway, you could think about the potential of fitting doors into it, then the space above it could be a fixed semi circle of glass, to let the light through and save you having to butcher the actual archway.

Yes, that was what I originally wanted. But it's too low. The curvature begins only about 5'9" high, and I couldn't make the whole doorway that low. I think probably if I ever do make it into a proper doorway with doors, then the best thing to put there would be simple double doors, not folding or sliding or anything, but with what Google has just told me are called Parliament hinges.

The floor plans I originally put on photobucket weren't quite accurate. I did them from the EA's particulars plus my memory, and I made some mistakes about the positions of some of the doors and the directions in which they open. I've done a corrected version and put it there - same album, but called floorplan2 instead of floorplan1.