This room has had many iterations. When we viewed the place it was actually a beauty room (previous owner did Botox). For us it started off as a playroom. Kids never played in it. Then it was a dining room - which was better but we didn't like the exposed stone wall, and the red wood-stained floor (maybe they were pretending it was mahogany?) had such big gaps between the planks that all our crumbs went in and were a complete bugger to get out again. Then it was empty for a while. Then we re-purposed some of the wardrobes from upstairs into a gin and games cupboard in there which was actually great but we couldn't decide what else to put in the room. Then we bandied about with the idea of knocking it all through into the kitchen. That would have made an amazing kitchen but we would have had to find somewhere else for the downstairs toilet and we couldn't find anywhere that we were suitably happy with.
In the end we decided to make it into an office. It was sort of a big job because there were a few complications. First off we wanted to plaster over the stone wall but it was so close to the door-frame that we weren't sure if we'd be able to do it with plasterboard. Also the gas comes into the house in one corner of the room and that was a great big pipe covered in bright green tape that stuck out of the wall. Also some of the central heating pipes went up one corner behind some ugly boxing.
Our super good plumbers managed to sort out the gas pipe and other ones so that we could board over them which was a big win. We also did manage to plasterboard the stone wall with a bit of wizardry. Then it was easy. We had it all skimmed, painted it white, got a carpet (also new skirting board) and suddenly found ourselves with quite a beautiful new room.
The best thing about the office is the insulated walls. This is the first room we've actually boarded rather than just skimmed so we were able to add insulation and it's made such a difference. During the winter it felt like a normal cold house rather than the inside of a freezer. We can't wait to do more rooms.
