Victorian Living Room/Drawing Room

by RM
(Yorkshire, UK)

I thought you might like to hear about the work we did in the drawing room/lounge following the purchase of our late Victorian town house.

We had been hoping to leave the existing original wooden floor boards bare but with occasional scatter rugs. Unfortunately the upward draft, in the winter, soon put paid to that idea ! Our compromise was to put down a basic cheap plain carpet & then add a feature large rug that we could roll up and take with us if we had to move again.

The fire place was boarded up but had a beautiful marble mantelpiece. We decided to restore the fireplace to the style that existed, when the property was first built, over a 100 years ago. However, as we were all leading busy lives, & it was also a family home to three children, we wanted the convenience of modern day appliances.

Fortunately it was already piped out for gas & our central heating was also gas. Thus it was easy to get this checked out & updated. A test on the chimney showed that the ravages of time had left a number of leaks that would need urgent attention before we could use it. The chimney could be lined with either stainless steel, which was cheaper but could only be used for gas, or concrete which was more expensive but could be used for gas or coal/wood. We opted for concrete which was cast very professionally in situ.


We then turned our attention to the fire itself. We tried our local fireplace company but they were very expensive, mainly because they wanted to remove the mantelpiece to put in the new fireplace. In addition, they expected us to take out insurance in case they broke something !

Fortunately we found another company, about 12 miles away, who said it was not necessary to remove anything & moreover they had insurance to cover any accidental damage. This demonstrates the importance of obtaining alternative quotations.

Thus we settled on a reproduction Victorian gas fire which would look identical to the real thing but with added convenience. All the work was completed satisfactorily & on time.

The rest of the room was decorated to match the feature rug, mainly using existing furniture but new curtains were purchased. In the photographs the walls look pink, but in reality they are a Dulux Heritage named colour. Later an existing three piece suit was replaced by a more contemporary leather one, purchased direct from a small manufacturer who exports all over the world. They also re-upholstered two existing cane-backed chairs & a piano stool in the same leather.

Now all our work is complete we think the only changes we would make would be to one of the leather chairs ( the daddy chair ) which even I have to admit is a bit over the top but very comfortable !

Our best decision was to go for the concrete liner, to the chimney, rather than the stainless steel one, as this will allow us to switch away from very expensive gas to either coal or to a log burning stove if these high energy prices continue.

Hope this is of interest to your other readers.

Regards

RM ( Yorkshire )