while this photo shows the other end of the room, with the window looking out onto the back garden
but we decided when we went for open plan in the rest of the downstairs space that we would like a 'cosy', and preferably child-free, room where we could sit on a winter's evening with the fire on, reading our books and/or watching tv - a romantic notion, don't you think?!Within days of the builders starting work on the house, they had stripped away the horrendous stone covering the chimney breast
and built a wall to make the room much more 'snug'-like
Then it was a case of removing the rather over-sized Bath stone fire surround (currently residing in the garage until we get round to listing it on eBay) and the electric fire
fitting a new door
plastering the walls (doesn't the fire look tiny now?!)
painting the room white
and building a huge, ugly, concrete hearth. Huge and ugly in order for it to conform to building regs which state it must be a certain height, certain depth, certain blah blah and blah-di-blah.
Then pop in a vintage (1930s or 50s perhaps?) grate found in the garage
oh, and box in some ugly heating pipes
pop some new skirting on
and fit some new carpet in gorgeous burgundy stripes - Carousel Cord by Brintons. 
Hubby scored a major steal with this carpet after a little bit of research on the internet/via good old eBay. The RRP is £80 per sq.m - ouch, with a capital 'O'. Totally out of our price range. However, there was a company in Leeds (I think) selling it for just £25 per sq.m. as they could only supply narrowish widths meant for stairs and landings. Our carpet fitter assured us this wouldn't be a problem as any join would be easily hidden by the stripes; and he was right - we don't even know where the join is (there's only one as the carpet supplied wasn't all that narrow). It just goes to show how much money can be saved with a little time spent on the tinterweb.
And then it was time to start moving in the furniture. This room is still very much a work in progress, and is also a little bit of a dumping ground for the time being. We've moved the bureau in, but that's about it; we really need to buy/acquire a couple of comfy chairs, a chest of drawers (or similar) to put a tv on, and some more book storage. Not to mention some curtains - I'm thinking burgundy velvet to pick up on the colour in the carpet and to make the room feel even snuggier! Oh, and we need a standard lamp, or side lamps and we need to hang some pictures. This will call for another post at a later date...
Today I'd also like to take a little time to say thank you to friends, family and neighbours who have kindly sent us 'New Home' cards. I suspect most of them are getting a bit fed up with us moving so often and are keeping their fingers crossed that we'll stay put for a goodly while.
Not only that, but R also made us a 'card' in the form of a little house with a bee inside - cute, clever and very 'made to measure' since it features a map of our village to front and back - how's that for personalisation?
If you're ever down on the Jurassic Coast, you should definitely make a bee-line (see what I did there?!) for their Gallery - you won't be disappointed! And if you can't make it to Dorset, worry not as they are launching an online version of the Gallery very soon - you heard it here first!
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 
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.
