The middle bedroom

Our third child was due in a few months and we needed to house his cot somewhere. The picture below shows what the middle bedroom looked like when we viewed the house. Can you guess where we put the cot?

How the room looked when we viewed the house

Whilst we're here, there are a few lessons we can take from this room. Here are my top three:

1. Novelty/kids bedding rarely does a room any favours

2. Wall stickers plastered all over the place look too busy and cluttered

3. 'Fun' handles can easily look naff (see wardrobe doors)

But anyway, those are just my opinions. Back to the cot dilemma. The problem with fitted wardrobes is that they can limit a room's layout options. We knew this room was too big to just have a cot in place of the bed. This would have meant a lot of wasted space. So we looked at the built in desk. It was actually a bit too shallow for an adult to sit at and work (we think the original intention was for it to serve as a dressing table), so we took it out:

The light fitting is called Kapow. Take that!

The cot is the Ikea SINGLAR cot which had served our two older daughters well. It had to go on a diet to fit in the nook, though. My husband took about an inch off the length with a jigsaw before reassembling it, and the mattress, being foam, just compressed down a tad more than before. We wallpapered the nook in this gorgeous wallpaper by Abigail Edwards. It's a little pricey but we only needed one roll (we had 20 cm left of wallpaper when we were finished!).

We also:

- painted the walls a mid-grey tone

- changed the handles to these ones from Ikea. A local freecycler came and collected the old ones, so nothing was wasted

- decided to opt for a recessed blackout blind rather than re-instating a curtain pole (see original picture - comically the right hand end goes smack into the wardrobe!)

In the next few years we are anticipating a fair amount of musical bedrooms, with changing bed times as they get older, and spates of wanting to be alone vs. craving company. The neutral grey walls mean we can adapt the room to various tastes using bedding and accessories, rather than having to repaint.

At some point in the future there may well be a desk in the alcove once more, but it will be free-standing, and one which is deep enough to do homework on.

The main star of the show though is without a doubt the Hemnes daybed. This is the third house it has lived in. It is a sofa, a single bed, a double bed when you pull it out, or two single beds if you move one mattress onto the floor. (they are on top of each other). And all the while it houses three generous drawers of storage underneath. There are not many pieces of furniture that are this versatile. We also use it as a change-station for Rufus.