The Tiniest Spare Room There Ever Was

Do you remember our box room? That very small third bedroom, which was a nursery, then a bedroom, then an office? Well it's changed again. It's now a spare room, but still a kind of office of sorts. It's still small though, that hasn't changed.

We dismantled that lovely big, white desk and put it back in the garage. It will be used again, I am sure. In it's place we squeezed - and I do mean squeezed, we had to move the radiator - a single bed. But not just any single bed, a trundle bed. 

Look, it's like a double decker bed! 

It turns out that the sofa bed downstairs, which all our lovely house guests have always slept on, isn't that comfortable, and once they got wind of our spare third bedroom, hints were dropped about the possibility of putting a bed in this room. It's quite a clever contraption. Even I can manage it. You pull out the bed underneath, lower the legs and behold, you have either two single beds or one huge double bed.

When no-one is staying, the bed is covered over with a throw and, with the addition of a little clip-on lamp, makes a lovely reading spot. I mockingly call it a "day bed" and the kids love sitting up there people watching.

On the other wall, we had a chair (now in the loft) and an old IKEA bookcase. Now we have something here which I am ridiculously excited about, as space saving measures go - a drop down desk from IKEA!! Look, isn't it great?

We use it as a desk, as we still have the filing cabinet and all our paperwork in that room, and it can also be used as a dressing table too, or anything really.

And then, when we have people staying, the bed comes out and is made up (which is actually pretty hard work as it's sooo wide), and the chair is put on the landing and the desk lowered.

And there you have it, a very big bed in a very small room. It works, just, and has so far had very good reviews.

 It did mean that a curtain tie-back was needed though, as the position of the bed means the curtain must be pulled to one side. Really, a blind would be a lot better here now, but a curtain is what we have and so I made the best of it with a striped tie-back. 

The colours are supposed to echo what is in the room, with the mustard, teal, pink and grey. There is something summery about the stripes, they remind me of the beach, of deckchairs.

I don't mind losing our big desk as, to be honest, I never really used it. I still do any sewing or computer work downstairs, at the dining room table, as I always have done and probably always will. It was very handy for photographing things though! Luckily, the new little desk will do, for now.