A New Lair (phase 1)

There has been tension in the Walker household, as the compact previous incarnation of the lair seen here:

...has started to outgrow it's limited confines and spread further into our living room (see previous post on new photo set up).  As useful as the "Painting Station of Doom" has been it just wasn't enough room to work properly, and the bench wasn't a comfortable seat.

So agreement has been reached and one of the spare bedrooms in our house will become the new lair!  It will still double as a guest bedroom as there will be a rather comfortable IKEA sofa bed (the same model as seen recently at Tentakel Games) staying, but the majority of the room will be turned over to the dark arts.

Like all diabolical schemes, it will be multi-phase and phase 1 has been achieved:

Some notes on the pictures:

1. A blind will be going up at the window, to save premature blindness
2. The ironing board is going...
3. In the bottom of the second picture, note the black and white furry demon, Hex, bane of anything small enough to bat off a table (and he tries to drink my brush washing water too...).  

So phase 1 is complete, including the TV in the corner, which means I can keep up to date with news and the football, or watch QI and Mock the Week while painting.  Mrs Walker is happier that all my stuff is out of the living room and we don't have to worry about the cats (oh yes, we have more than one) knocking things over.

Phase 2 is planned and a week away from commencement.  You may have noted the bizarre gothic style fire place.  To fit the ridiculously large mantelpiece (origin and construction unknown, no STC found, possibly xenos...I've still yet to work out how the damn thing is attached to the wall), a previous owner of the property used plaster board to extend the width of the chimney breast - and yes dear reader, those words in your head match the ones in mine when I discovered this.

The picture below helps show the extent of the insanity:

 

By process of knocking on the wall and seeing where the hollow sounds stop and the solid sounds begin, I've found the extension of the chimney breast begins at roughly the centre of the mantelpiece support column.  So Phase 2a will be somewhat destructive, removing the hollow bits, and stripping the wallpaper (the woodchip variety, scourge of DIY).  Phase 2b will then be the painting of the room using a lovely shade of white to maximise the light in the room.  Phase 2a and 2b are planned for next week which I'm taking off from work.

Picture courtesy of Ikea.co.uk

Phase 2c will involve adding this splendid piece of furniture in the corner and I'll probably be getting a new chair too. Hurrah!

As always, comments and criticism welcome!