The Utidly

In my post for the first half of March I recounted that we had fitted Flotex flooring to both Erica and Bertie. It was as I measured up for Bertie that it occurred to me that if we positioned the pattern pieces appropriately, we would have enough of the flooring left* to do our utidly** room.

The flooring was duly fitted and for the next few days there was an exclamation of 'oooh!' every time one of us set foot in that room. That led me to wonder for exactly how long we had lived with a bare concrete floor, which led me to search through old photo files. The answer surprised me. 

When we moved into this house the utidly room was a single-skin (attached) outbuilding that had been added to the house in the 1980s. It had a row of three dilapidated kitchen cupboards at one end and had brown carpet tiles on the floor. It soon became apparent that we needed some insulation in there and, in my mind, we bought and fitted that insulation not long after we moved in.

I was partially right. When I initially failed to find the photos I was looking for, I searched my emails and found that we had indeed bought the solid-panel insulation panels six months after we moved here, but I still couldn't find the photos. Eventually I searched my email archive for the window we had bought for the refit. Goodness! Did we really live here for 2.5 years with insulation board leaning against the walls, waiting for us to build some stud walling, insulate and plaster, then fit it out with cabinets and work surface? Apparently we did.

Here's the story of that room in photos:

1) The day that we finally started the refit. What a mess! What a dumping ground! At this end of the room, along with the dilapidated cupboards, we have some makeshift shelves containing mainly buckets and stacks of sweet tins (used to store dehydrated meals when preparing for backpacking trips), two dehydrators, a  book case and a spare freezer. Note the insulation boards just stood against the walls.

Note also the brown carpet tiles on the floor. Feel free to insult those tiles, but be aware that we still have the same flooring in our kitchen. It's simultaneously hideously dated and fantastically practical. 

2) The other end of the room on the day we started the refit. The freezer seen in the snap above is also visible in this one, along with a fridge freezer and another fridge and another freezer. Bit excessive?! You may also notice there are two vacuum cleaners. Then there's the dresser (on which sits the microwave and breadmaker). In 1996, upon moving into a shared house, I found this dresser sitting on a landing waiting to go to the tip. I asked if I could have it and it moved house with me seven times (with two of its legs falling off every time it was lifted) before this refit finally consigned it to the destination for which it was intended in 1996, after a reprieve of some 19 years. 

3) Studwork built and insulation going in. 

4) Plasterboard going up

5) Cupboard building

6) Cupboard fitting

7) Door removal

8) Window fitting

9) Nearly there...

10) All of the photos above were taken in June 2015. Fast forward to 16 March 2021 when I took these snaps immediately before we started cutting the Flotex. Yep, that floor had looked like that for the entire 5.5 years. We had talked about flooring back in 2015, but figured we may as well wait until we refitted the kitchen, then we could make the two match. The only downfall in this plan was that whilst our kitchen is dated, there's nothing wrong with it. There's no other design that would work in the space and the cupboards are of good quality with solid oak doors, so why refit it just for the sake of it?

11)  Later on 16 March 2021:

Much more visually pleasing and, of course, so much nicer underfoot. 

Just think: if Coronavirus hadn't kept us confined to home last year we wouldn't have fitted out a campervan, and would not have found ourselves finally carpeting our utidly room (the two events being directly linked). How much longer would we have lived with a bare floor in the absence of Covid?

Now that the floor is sorted, I wonder what will provoke me into finally doing something with the bare plaster board?

(*Had six months not passed since I'd ordered the flooring, I might have been able to remember whether I simply mismeasured/miscalculated when I ordered or whether 2x2m roll-ends plus carriage was more or less the same price as 1x5m roll-end, but either way it was a bonus that we found ourselves with 0.9m x 3.1m left over, which is exactly what we needed for the utidly.

**I believe it was a friend's daughter who in her childhood mispronounced 'utility' and is the basis for our such room being referred to by the name 'utidly')