I haven't posted about the work on this room before, but we started on it last September.
It is the oldest addition to the house and is seperated from the rest of the property by a wall that goes right into the loft. When we moved in it was the cleanest room, with no smell of smoke.
"The parlour room was the 'good room'. The parlour was rarely used for the family, instead it was maintained meticulously in case of visiting dignitary’s such as the priest, doctor or teacher".
Irish Cottage History, cottageology.com
Due to these two factors this is the room we initially moved into and used as essentially a bedsit whilst working on the rest of the property. We removed the huge wooden fire surround (finding a bird skeleton behind it) and Freya took on the job of drawing on the walls to liven it up. The problem with it as a bedroom was the lack of insulation which made it expensive to heat, so as winter approached we decided to bite the bullet and get it done, even though it meant sleeping in the main room for a few weeks.
The first job was to remove the plasterboard drylining, scrape off the layers of modern impermeable paint (which were flaking off pretty well anyway) and remove any loose render. Unfortunately at this point a lot more of the render around the gable window came off than we hoped and Brian had to rebuild that area.
For now this room is our shared bedroom, hopefully in the longer term it will revert to its original use as a living space.