Study in our Victorian house

by RM
(Yorkshire, UK)

Thought you might like a picture of our study/sitting room.

When we bought our late Victorian house a few years ago it had been advertised as having 7 bedrooms, but bedroom 4 and beyond were all "walk through" from one to the other.

In addition there was no study. It had been on the market for some time & this was probably why it had not been snapped up before.

To me, this explains why older period houses are so attractive. They just need some imagination & some TLC..!

We treated it as a four bedroom house, as three of the so called "walk through" bedrooms were all in the attic.

Our son volunteered to be in the attic, a great bonus as we could not then hear his music!

This allowed us to use the bedroom on the second floor as a study/sitting room.

To make the room look less like a bedroom we added some bookshelves on one side of the fireplace to match an original cupboard.

We then added delft high level shelving which runs around all four walls.

This work was completed by a local carpenter & painted to match the existing cupboard by ourselves & now looks completely original.

Some existing small easy-chairs, that were not exactly in the first flushes of youth, were added together with an existing small sideboard. A small portable TV was purchased & a new CD player.

As our youngest daughter's bedroom was very small (the disadvantage of being the youngest in the family!) it acted as her playroom until early evening.

The big cupboard then easily swallowed all her toys, dolls etc.

Later it became a true study; that is a refuge to play music or just read the newspaper or catch-up on a TV programme that no one else wants to watch.

This transformation was all achieved at minimal cost.