Heavy smoking by the previous owners meant that the entire house had a terrible smell. Tar had slowly built up on the walls, ceilings, carpets...everything. Burning scented candles became essential.

First step - strip the walls of woodchip. Most of it had dried to a crisp on the wall and after trial and error I found the easiest way to remove it was to push the scrapper up behind a section, raise the scrapper 90 degrees and snap the section off. It was so dried the edges were razor sharp and I cut my hands a number of times. However, working with a steamer on some of it created water droplets on the ceiling that would turn brown with cigarette tar and drip down. Completely disgusting; cut fingers were not so bad after all! I don't feel the photos show just how ghastly it was.

Monty did try to get involved!

Once the walls were stripped we started to knock out the bricks either side of the fire place. The internet kept on through it all - it had taken months to organise installation!

A gas expert removed the old fire and back boiler, opening up the chimney. Then we finished removing the remaining bricks; the ones on the hearth were especially difficult to remove, coming away in pieces.

The house was rewired with the electrics chased into the walls. I took down the ceiling roses. A plasterer removed the highest peaks of Artex with a large scrapper, put PVA glue over the whole ceiling and re-plastered, leaving a smooth finish. The holes for the electrics, chimney and fire place were also plastered. Fresh plaster has to dry out completely, turning a pale terracotta colour, before a first coat of paint and water, mixed in equal proportions, followed by coats of neat paint.

Once the ceiling was painted we turned to the walls, painting them Soft Almond and Lauren from B&Q.

We raised the hearth to match the height inside the fire place by constructing a wooden surround and filling with a self-levelling compound.

Level concrete covered the floor in the rest of the room and we decided to lay a click together laminate wooden floor, purchased on sale. Firstly a damp proof membrane was laid, then underlay on top.

Calculating where to start and how to cut the first wooden board was complicated. Everything didn't seem quite right as we started so I recalculated and remeasured and realised that each side of the doorway, across the first wall, did not line up. This meant the starting wall was not straight and required some extra adjustments!

The first boards had to be sawn along the length in order for them to fit all the way to the far wall. When we finally reached the other end of the room I was very relieved to find the calculations were correct and the last boards fitted perfectly. And of course Wimbledon was on the whole time!

All the furniture had to be moved to one end of the room, then moved onto the completed section, in order to finish the other end. Furniture moving played a large part of the renovation process! Having less stuff is definitely the way forward.

Working out how to join the flooring to the hearth was tricky. We had seen a surround in a National Trust property and took that idea to a local joinery shop who created the profile for the surround in wood, which we then cut and glued together. Travertine tiles completed the hearth.

Here is the finished room which we feel very proud of.