Today I busied myself with a few hours of door-to-door collection for refugee aid in Syria and South-Sudan, and once my “be a grown-up and care about other people” duties were dispatched I went home and started playing around with my favourite pastime: Sketching and re-sketching the floor plan of my future house and googling furniture that will go with it.
The problem is, I’ve always wanted something modern as a counterpoint to my inherited old stuff and the 1950’s teak furniture I’ve bought myself. And I find myself thinking about what I want the house to look like when I’m done, and what I really want in something cosy and homey and friendly. And I just don’t see the house lending itself to modernity unless I keep all my furniture in Copenhagen and only bring new furniture to the house.
So there goes all my aesthetic credentials! I’ve fallen in love with a new sofa that looks rather 1950’s Scandinavian – and would complement my 1950’s coffee table beautifully -and because the front room is so big I might even get a set of matching armchairs. Matching furniture… Really? When did I outgrow BoHo chic?
The part of the front room that is closest to the wood burner will be sofa, armchairs, coffee table. And then in the far end will be a “desk” – in this case a round mahogany table with curved legs from my great-grandparents’ house – and a throne-like armchair from around 1910, set against a backdrop of a wall covered in shelving for my books. (I really have no clue how many I own, but I suspect I’m closing in on 3,000.)
And then there’s the kitchen… When I realised what would happen to the front room, I figured I could make the kitchen into the contemporary aspect of the house. But… Then I realised that really, I want as few “kitchen units” as possible! I want the dining table in the kitchen to be part of the work space, proper farmhouse-style. A big, solid wooden table with sturdy legs… And that table will set the tone for everything else. As few built-in units as possible – fridge, sink, cooker – and then just regular furniture in solid, simple wood.
The dining table will be large. I have my eye on a 7′ by 3′ table that extends to 10′ long; big enough to provide a good workspace for anything I could imagine making in a kitchen – and to double as a works pace for crafts projects and triple as a setting for big dinners for friends and family.
Of course, “The Kitchen” doesn’t exist yet. A wall needs to come down to merge the present kitchen with the small sitting room, and that won’t happen until I have paid for the new roof and know my budget. But still… It won’t cost a lot to knock the two rooms together, just a lot of work.
(Everything will be a lot of work, it seems. And that’s without factoring in the garden.)
I see the house so clearly… As it is and as it will be. I can’t wait to get the keys in just over 3 weeks’ time.
Sounds like you will be having loads of fun with decorating and making your new home yours. 🙂
I’m really having to reign myself in, because there’s just so much to dream about – but obviously overspending on furniture and underspending on the roof would be silly, so we’ll see when all the dreams begin to happen…
(And in the post I completely forgot that I have my great-grandmother’s sofa set in storage in my aunt’s attic, so clearly I need to use that, rather than buy a new sofa set. Completely different style, but much more history – and probably better quality than any modern sofa I can afford! Also, it’s free since it’s mine already… I like free…)
Free is best, especially when you have the roof on your list! We have an old home and while I have been itching to be a decorating maven over the past years we’ve had to be good and fix the roof, chimneys, heating, etc. The list is long!
I can still decorate, considering that most rooms can be done with very few materials apart from the flooring and paint, but furnishing really needs to be a bit down on my list of priorities. Mind you, the current Danish government is all about helping the middle and upper classes on expense of poorer people, so I can get tax credits for laying a new insulated roof and there’s an incentive scheme in place if I want to replace my wood burners with newer models with lower particle emissions. And of course I can also get tax credits for installing air-to-air heating…
Because of course we all know how hard it is for the struggling middle classes with weekend homes. We need help! (Sarcasm may occur.)
I swear the next house will have more for decorating and less for major projects. Though I’m sure I won’t be able to keep the sarcasm at bay either. I mean, I haven’t yet so there isn’t any hope. 🙂
Decorating is cheap, though. It just takes a billion years of hard work, especially when doing it on your own. Still, friends have offered to help, so there’ll always be the option of calling in the cavalry when I sit down on the floor crying because it’s all too much. (And we all know that WILL happen.)
(But the major projects will cost well over what I paid for the house…)
For the major projects my husband and I try to do the labour bit. Saves a ton of money. The roof, however, we hired people. No way I’m getting up there!
And no way I’m risking making a mistake on something like the roof! It’s the most important part of a house, really, so I want trained craftsmen and -women to do it – and a full warranty! The same goes for important parts of the electric work…
Absolutely!