So … the den

4 September 2010

The front bedroom in our house was once upon a time occupied by Lee. He’s 19 years older than me and when I was little I would go to his room just before my bedtime to sit in his new-fangled comfy chair that could spin round and round and ask to listen to a song from one of his new-fangled compact discs.

I don’t remember how old I was when he moved out, but I know I was young enough to still be playing with a pull-along toy – I can see it in my one shot memory of him going downstairs with a box of his belongings.

John moved out of the tiny room we shared at the back of the house and into that room. As he grew up he filled it with computers and posters of supermodels. Wanting to be like him whenever possible, I too admired supermodels; John’s favourite was Claudia Schiffer and mine was Karen Millen. We would cut out photos of them from Mum’s Littlewoods catalogue.

After grammar school John went to university, came back, moved out to Hampshire, started a company, went to Northolt and then onto Woking, where he keeps his very nice wife in his very nice house with a very big car on the drive.

Meanwhile the front bedroom became what I called the den. It was where I had a TV and where I had John’s old wardrobe to house my clothes. My little bedroom had now been redecorated and I’d heaved out the stuff I could hang in a wardrobe to elsewhere so as to reduce its broom cupboard-like appearance. The den also served as a spare bedroom, hosting friends overnight – and John on various sojourns between moves around the country.

It’s been many years since the den was decorated and there’s not really any where to sit and relax in there. The bean bag that I can lie on is well past its prime and that leaves just the floor for my guests. And as someone who currently spends a lot of time sitting on that floor watching TV, I can assure you that it isn’t prime seating.

For months now I have had in mind to turn the den into a sitting room for myself; somewhere I can entertain my friends. I know that Suzy for one is sick of sitting on a computer chair in the office when she comes to see me. I’d just like somewhere to go where we can shut the door and, well, the first thing that came to mind was “eat”. I think I was going more for “hang out”, but I’ll take “eat”.

As I type I can hear two guys upstairs in the den. They’re plastering and straightening the crooked, bumpy walls for me and so the den project is really underway at last. But before we get onto all the changes, let’s start at the very beginning. I hear it’s a very good place to start and so I’ll show you how the den looked before I started ripping off the wallpaper. I’ll add more notes to the photos on Flickr too.

This is the view from the door – left, straight ahead, right. Of course the first thing I’ve learned from this project is that I should have kept Lauren’s fisheye lens when I borrowed it for a few minutes in July. 18mm just doesn’t quite cut it in this room.

With the window behind me, this is the bed slotted snuggly in between the wall and the stairhead. The stairhead was once John’s desk when a foothole was cut out and then when John’s room became the den, Dad knocked the stairhead back as far as he could and a divan just slotted in nicely. That divan is gone now though, having been donated to The Bridge Trust.

Looking to the right we find my lovely TV – ah, how I love my TV – and my DVD collection, an eclectic mix of robots killing people and young girls raising goslings, muscly men beating the crap out of each other and Martin Sheen putting the world to rights.

On the left we have what faces the DVD collection: my craft box full of yarn I’m not using and a chest of drawers full of craft stuff I’m not using and a bunch of old diaries and birthday cards.

In the middle photo you see the inside of the enormous wardrobe. This isn’t the original one I inherited from John, but rather a very big one that was bought to house my stuff and Dad’s stuff before Mum and Dad had a very swish built-in wardrobe fitted in their bedroom. The top hanging rail that had once guarded Dad’s shirts was now guarding a few dresses and a bunch of handbags. What a great use of space!

On the right is my lamp. Once permanent resident of the den, I’ve ousted it and it’s now buried somewhere in a rubbish tip. I made it twelve years ago for my GCSE Design Technology course and though I can understand why some people might question my heartless disposal of it, I was done with it. I’ve got a nice photo of it and it wasn’t anything I was ever going to have out to decorate my home and – the exam auditor can look away now – the teacher bent the pipes for me and Dad sanded the base, so it’s not as though I felt a great connection to this hand-crafted entity after all this time. Plus, I have other plans for that corner…

Posted in: the den, travels

Comments

3 Responses to “So … the den”

DeeJay
4th September 2010 @ 1:45 pm

Very cozy. I like!

[Reply]
Eva
4th September 2010 @ 2:38 pm

I look forward to seeing the transformation. Are you going with a swanky 80s piano bar theme?

[Reply]
doow
4th September 2010 @ 4:59 pm

I’ve never done so well with themes, so for the time being the theme is just “I don’t want to sit on the floor anymore”. But maybe a theme will emerge from the decisions I’ve made and I’ll look all clever and shit.

[Reply]