The Master Bedroom and En Suite Bathroom

This was one of the places where we have had to change significantly from the original plan. The idea had been to put two bedrooms separated by two small en suite bathrooms into the space. The first picture shows how it was at the start with the supporting timbers for the original roof structure in place. Our French builder who renovated the roof to the house did not move these timbers as we had expected and that the posed the problem of how to alter the floor levels as the beams holding the timbers up would have needed to be moved downwards to create sufficient headroom for the two bedrooms/bathrooms.

However, the further problem was that if the beams had been moved downwards we would have needed to dig out the floor in the kitchen to gain headroom there. This would have been enormously difficult, as mentioned in a previous post, as there are virtually no foundations to the walls and we would have needed to underpin them – very difficult and costly. So we made the decision that we would have only one bedroom with an en suite bathroom.

Even that proved very difficult, firstly in 'rescuing' the support structure for the roof. A slow and at times rather dangerous piece of work involving a large number of acrow props till the bedroom was sorted. Then the dormer had to be created to make space for the bathroom. Because the roof pitch is so low it was a real problem to get the dormer roof in place and it was quite a feat of building engineering to achieve it.

The window to the bedroom is in fact the front door that we had put in place at the start of the project; if you look at the picture of the newly crépied front to the house you'll see that we have replaced it with a second-hand traditional French farmhouse door. We have a wrought iron balcony balustrade ready to put on the outside of this window/doorway but that will have to wait till warmer weather now as it will involve the window being open for quite some time as cement dries.

In the picture of the new kitchen you can see that we've put in a wood-burning stove. The chimney for this stove runs up into this bedroom and is hidden behind the doors of the wardrobe. When the fire is lit we open the doors to let the residual heat from the insulated chimney warm the bedroom.

Because we bought rather more floor tiles than we actually needed for the ground floor – there has been far less wastage than we calculated – we have been able to tile out both of the new en suites in the same tiles as the ground floor. It gives a nice sense of symmetry to this part of the house.

The door to the left of the entrance to the bathroom leads into a small space under the eaves, it is immediately above the utility room. It is boarded and plaster boarded out and is to be a dressing room. When I have the time I shall put a small dormer window in to provide natural light and ventilation. On the other side of the bathroom you'll note the space where the hot water tank sits. This awaits a door which is to be made for us by a friend who is a carpenter/cabinet maker, but who is also very busy with other projects. So it may be some time before we get this closed off properly.