Our living room has two lovely cream leather sofas sitting on a carpet of warm aubergine, surrounded by matching furniture.  If you know us at all you will understand that matching is not quite how I would describe our preferred interior decor, but matching it is, right down to the spare bedroom.  Well, I was told off for calling it the spare bedroom while my daughter was still flying the flag, I should really say, we match right down to her bedroom.

We are busily trying to change all that and my brother has said to me on more than one occassion,

“What are you going to do with all this stuff?”

To be honest I don’t know yet, but…

“buying furniture together must mean you’re pretty serious,” my oldest son observed the other week as we showed him our latest purchases via video skype.

I think initially we were mismatched because we gratefully took anything family and friends felt called to part with to help us newly weds set up house.  Our few new cherry wood pieces of chinese carved furniture matched with each other once upon a time in a small condominium.  Now they are lost among the dark wood, pine, oak and walnut of other antiques that are scattered around our spacious house.  You could say they match within their own parcel of space, the walnut Indian lamp-post goes with the painted wooden elephants, the twelve seater oak church pew resides alone on a long wall with nothing but itself to clash with and the red cherry, French polished coffee table, beaten and battered with years of service as a toy car ,race track looks at home in the middle of mismatched leather couches and recliners.  It is a home; it is lived in.

However, we need to be a little more careful in our small square footage in London.  With that in mind we threw caution to the wind when we happened upon an antiques auction the other weekend.  We fell in love with a two seater, Victorian, dark oak settle.  After jumping through hoops to get it home safely (London taxis and busses will not accommodate settle toting individuals no matter how polite), we have it in the hall against a white wall looking very dignified and…out of place!  There is no opportunity to view it face on, the hall is not large enough.  This hall piece may end up in the lounge snuggled against the cream leather but my instinct says it is better suited in my bedroom lording it over the modern super-king Ikea bed, when we finally succumb, which won’t be very many days hence.

We need curtains in the lounge to finish off the initial look.  I was set on florals.  We found several to suit but then realised that the same patterns in ready mades were repeating themselves throughout London.

Then I spotted the screen print I wanted, a backdrop of many coloured tulips; they hung in the window of an exclusive furniture shop on the King’s Road boldly aping a Hampton Court flower bed in magnificent bloom.

I was slain.  Nothing else would satisfy.  I searched the internet in vain.  I may as well give up and make do with naked windows.

Unexpectedly I found the fabric in a little shop in a small town near Beckenham.  I was overjoyed until I realised the price was not right.  Curtains for one room were going to cost as much as the sofas.  I surrendered to good sense.

When I awoke this morning I had a new idea,

“Let’s go for plain, rose coloured curtains to bring out the dusky pink in the carpet and then we can buy remnant fabric and scatter the leather with mismatched cushions.”

“Good idea,” said hubs breathing a sigh of relief.

So we have dusky pink curtains ready to be ironed and hung at our picture windows, the remnant baskets awaiting our foraging efforts and the sewing machine chomping at the bit!

What a weekend lies ahead!