Door dilemma

[pineapple]

Ok now living on the building site that is my cottage renovation. A previous owner thought it would be nice to expose and stain the bedroom floorboards above the lounge to match the beams and joists. Which makes the room dark - not helped by the little cottage windows and big planked door. Thinking of plastering between the joists or even painting the boards which would help but I would love to let some light in and be able to look out onto the cobbled courtyard. Am loathe to lose the door however. The door opens inwards. Was wondering about changing it to outwards and fitting a secondary glazed door on the inside so at times I could open the outer door and look out without letting the weather in. Or I could maybe resite the door inwards and fit an external patio type door - or I could have a big section cut out and glazed (I've seen this done but not very well) or maybe I should just replace the door!
Has anyone dealt with similar?

 

[88v8]

Pictures !!

 

[mims&pip]

Yes, pictures would definitely help us with making suggestions pineapple :wink:

I can't remember, is your cottage listed? In our last house - a non-listed, three-storey Georgian property with ashlar stone frontage and thatched roof - we had a similar situation with the ceilings of some of our ground floor rooms and I made the decision to paint them. The PO had stained the beams, joists and ceiling - which, like yours was formed by the (in our case, replacement) floorboards of the rooms above - which made the dual aspect snug and North facing dining room very dark, despite the relatively high ceilings.

Not saying we don't appreciate dark, atmospheric spaces - we do, but as we planned to install engineered oak flooring (the original floors were long gone) and most of our furniture is of the dark antique variety, complemented by heavy fabrics in period colours, we felt the two rooms would benefit from brightening in some way. I opted to paint just the floorboards/ceiling between the joists using a period cream as opposed to white, leaving the joists and the wonderful elm beams untouched. Whilst not to everyone's taste, it did make a massive difference imho

Good luck and look forward to seeing some pics of your progress!

Mims x