The main lounge where the mural will be is currently a building site. You can see thepaint on the walls underneath the wallpaper that I removed was blood red. Quite like the red theme for this part of the gallery but not as dark as the red in these pictures. Not sure when this was painted, but the wallpaper had been on for at least 30 years. Got to imagine what the mural would look like against a red background, as the red will highlight any reds in the mural. May be a bit too frantic to look at. Current thinking among artists is that everything has to be stark white, but this is a historical building not a warehouse gallery. I find white too cold. When you are in a gallery you want to feel calm and relaxed. I personally like the some of the colours in the National Gallery in London and have spent whole days in there on occasions. Also the picture hangers are less obvious on darker walls than against white. The downstairs gallery will be white as it is darker and slightly subterranean ie, below ground level. It is low ceilinged unlike the lofty space above. See pictures below.

 

 

 

 

The square skylight will become round and a spiral staircase will be used to access it. We'll be able to watch the tall ships go by into Blyth harbour next year from the roof!

 

 When checking round the roof void above the octagonal room and in the loft above the kitchen there were a fair amount of inactive woodworm holes and small pockets of active blighters. So the lads had to go up and spray them. After this unpleasant job one or two reported seeing "entities" flying round the loft and roof void, like "small blobs of flying lights". Perhaps this was the ghosts of the poor worms they had just annihilated rising from their dark holes or it could of been that the chemicals of the woodworm spray had sent them on a spooky trip.

 

Again, as in the kitchen, there are those Vanbrughian arched windows in the octagonal lounge. Must go through those Delaval archival papers properly at Woodhorn to see if there really is any connection to Vanbrugh. At present the pleasant weather is not leading me towards the archival library. It is an interesting task but I now know how detectives must feel when they have to weed through tons of paperwork to find obscure clues.