Living in a wonky cottage

I think I have mentioned before that we live in a crumbly old cottage:

 (I can't dwell on this photo because the gaps between some of the stones freak me out, like the Big Bad Wolf could huff and puff and blow my house down.  Gulp.)

I love this little house.  I may have said before but it's actually a pair of very small cottages which were knocked through to make one house about 25 years ago.  One of the cottages that makes up our house is Grade II Listed, the other is not. The house, as a whole, is on a slope so although we have just two bedrooms we kind of have five floors/levels sometimes with just one room on a floor.

The house has bags of character; exposed stone walls in places, wooden beams everywhere, an inglenook fireplace and a vaulted ceiling. We bought this house because we love these quirky features.  I also love the sense of history here.  The deeds and other papers for the house were sent to us in a huge box and it was fascinating to read through some of them - we learned that the house, many years ago, was sold by auction at the local pub.  That amuses me.  I like to imagine a pickled old man, possibly a farm-hand, who staggered slowly home after what was meant to be a quiet drink in the pub before his tea.  He gets to the front door, cap in hand, scratching his head and greeting his wife... "you bought what??" she yells... Ha!

So old places are generally, to me, great.  Very occasionally they are not so great.  The walls in our house are mostly covered with artex which I'm not all that keen on but can't face the huge expense and disruption to have it removed.  Now that summer appears to be on its way out, and the temperature has dropped, the house is freezing.  I put the heating on for a short burst the other day (I know!) and we now have to light a fire if we spend any time at all in the living room.  We have to work really hard to keep mice at bay, especially at this time of year, and the conservatory roof has developed a leak.

The thing that I'm struggling with at the moment, though, is the wonkiness of the place.  (Is wonkiness even a word?)   The walls are uneven.  The floors are not level.  The ceilings aren't level either.  Nothing in this house looks straight.  Mostly I live with, and love, this fact but it has has been further highlighted today by the delivery of a lovely new dresser for the dining room (yep, the revamp has only just begun and the first piece of furniture has been delivered, slightly earlier than anticipated!).  We've popped it in the corner, where it will live post-revamp, and it fits perfectly (hurray!) but it looks so wonky:

See!  The floor slopes horribly.  I suspect the ceiling isn't ever so level either.   I just don't quite know how to straighten it up properly.  If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear from you - perhaps you have a similar issue at your own place?

I'm sorry for the slightly too 'real' rough and ready photo of the dresser and messy dining room.  We're selling all of our existing dark wood furniture on eBay so the room looks like a store room right now.

I know we all like to dream and swoon over other people's photos on our blogs and I can promise some prettier photos later in the week, if you'll bear with me.  My utility china collection is building nicely and I made a few fab purchases at local charity and antique shops over the weekend so I'll leave you with a taster of what's to come:

The husband couldn't understand why we need an old jam spoon, pickle fork and bread fork:  men really are from Mars.  ;-)

Nicki 

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