Non, it is in fact a terrible look, especially with those toys shoved up against the cardboard to stop it falling down. What bad parents we are, making our no.1 son sleep in such squalid conditions.
And without cardboard:
We had the option of trimming the blind (think hacksaw, scissors, a steady hand and the ability to cut in a straight line) to fit within the window recess or not trimming it and fitting it outside. We went for the easy (read: lazy) option and chose to fit it outside the recess, figuring that if it didn't work (ie too much light still came in at the edges of the blind), we could always go for the more difficult, recessed option at a later date (ie, high summer when we risk hearing calls of 'Daddy, daddy' when the sun comes up at 4am [note, DC is a Daddy's boy - he rarely calls for Mummy first thing in the morning; I'm not sure whether to be sad or glad...])
Luckily, when the house was being torn apart by the builders, we had the foresight to ask them to leave up the wood strips that had been fitted by the previous owner in most rooms for attaching curtain rails; this made life a lot, lot simpler as it meant screwing into wood and not brick. So simple in fact that hubby didn't even need to get his power drill out, he was able to get the screws into the wood with a regular screwdriver.
After holding the blind in against the wooden strip to assess and mark out where each end plate had to go, it was simply a job of fitting them both using the two screws supplied
then clipping the cord fixture in place 
and slotting the blind into the two end plates. Oh, and we had to unwind the blind and wind it back up the other way so that it unwound from the back rather than the front, if that makes sense?
And while hubby had his screwdriver to hand, he also fitted this sweet little coat hook that I'd bought last December from Anthropologie in New York (and which can now be bought in the UK and by mail order) - now DC has somewhere to hang his dressing gown.
Et voila, 30 minutes later and DC had a much, much nicer room. 
It does look like a lot of light is coming in around the blind, but these photos were taken on (an unseasonably) sunny day at 2pm, not normally a time when DC would be asleep in his room.
Now it's just a case of finding a neater, nicer way to store his toys. But whatever mess the room may be in, at least it's better than it was six months ago...
But we've been hmming and hawwing over 1) where to hang the coats and 2) what to hang them on. Before moving in we had envisaged hanging coats on the right side of the hall (as you come in the door); although actually before that we had envisaged hanging them in the boot room, but the boot room fell foul of the budget and has yet to be built. So, back to the hallway. We envisaged the right side of the hall, but that was before we put this little console table and mirror ensemble together and decided we quite liked it there. 
The other side of the hallway is a no-go for coats due to the window/radiator combo. 
So, what to do? Then hubby came up with the plan of hanging them under the stairs, behind the door into the living room. Armed with the measurement at the widest point, we headed to Frome in the hope of finding a coat rack of some description, but there were none to be found at the Bazaar or in any of the vintage/antique shops in the town. But, Fate intervened when we made a return visit to the Bazaar late on in the day, ostensibly to buy an eiderdown that we had been debating over. Said eiderdown had been sold, but what we did spot were these little beauties
Vintage, French coat hooks; £39 for the three; hubby offered £35 and they were ours. Definitely not the cheapest way to hang coats especially when, as hubby pointed out, you can't even see them once the coats are on them, but we like them and we especially like that it makes the dining area a LOT tidier. And I really like the fact that the lowest one is for DC and he can probably just about reach his own coats now - cute!
Always good to have a little helper to push the rawl plugs in.
And the downstairs loo:
Which didn't stay long.
This shot is taken from the living room, across the hallway through to the doorway into the 'snug'; here you can see the new internal door of the snug.
A-ha, at long last the new front door is being fitted; you can also see the parquet floor and the patch to the right where the downstairs loo used to be and there were lino tiles on the floor.
Another shot of the new front door (no letter box yet) and the old flooring.
New front door, again, but this time with letterbox cut.
These two shots shows the latex laid to level the floor before the new oak was put down.
This is what the stairway to the first floor looked like when we first viewed the house.
Here's the stairway with the new bannister being fitted and the old carpet on its way out. 
Understairs cupboard under construction.
Please excuse the grubby square of carpet in front of the door - there to protect the floor/act as a doormat while we decide on exactly what to have there - a doormat cut into the wood floor, or one that sits on top? Decisions, decisions!
