Friday 29 April 2011

Ikea Bank Holiday Jaunt




So yesterday we ventured courageously up to Ikea Edmonton in this, my friend Pob's veterinary ambulance. Unfortunately it doesn't have a siren, but there was a lot of whooping and squealing coming from inside as our excitement about our trip escalated and we tried, not always successfully, to follow the vehicle's extremely fickle satnav. Some people hate Ikea. I love it, and having a a whole ambulance to to fill with stuff was all the incentive I needed to buy rather more superfluous kitchen items than I should have done. Many many glass jars were placed in the trolley, many different kinds of tupperware, a jug, some ice-cube trays and a colourful set of knives which look the part but probably aren't very sharp (a bit like the sucker who might purchase such an item). One of my star buys was this cushion, which I've seen and admired in a few friend's houses.


I'm completing on the flat on the 12th of May, going to the dentist the day before and a music festival the day after. The timing is not ideal but I can't wait to get in there and start decorating. I'm picturing grey. I'm picturing orange. This is another recent purchase.


Just some Ikea fabric I loved stretched over a canvas bought from this place. Need to work out how best to arrange my jars and knives around it.

Thursday 21 April 2011

A Great Relief

Yesterday I finally got the good word from my solicitor that she received whatever bullshit piece of paper she's been waiting on, and I'm on the home stretch. For a while there it looked as though I might have been left homeless for several weeks. I wasn't so worried about myself (it's pretty warm out there at the moment) but what about all my precious things? I own a lot of things and they're all very precious. Now my hyper-enthusiasm has been renewed and my trawling of furniture stores, online and otherwise, has recommenced. Today I had a mosey around this place, which sells beautiful vintage furniture, so much better and cheaper than the kind you'd find in Habitat or Heals. Who is Heals for, by the way? Celebrities? Those are the only people I can think of who'd drop 2k on a rug. Incidentally Arch 389 is very close to this bakery which sells crazy good artisan bread cooked by hot scruffy men.

Now I can relax and look forward to my bank holiday trip to Ikea, even though in the back of my mind I know it's going to be hell on earth, especially if those roll-y shoes for children are still all the rage. Post Ikea update to follow.

Monday 11 April 2011

The Waiting Game

So, this is where it gets boring. The target exchange date (which I thought was rather ambitious in the first place but soon allowed myself to get over excited about) has come and gone and I'm still yet to exchange anything. I'm not even sure what the exchange entails or what it is I'm supposed to exchange, in exchange for what. I thought the whole thing was an exchange anyway, as in he gets money, I get a flat. It sounds like some kind of cryptic ceremony and it makes me think of bodily fluids. Speculation aside, what I do know is it's the thing that happens like 11 days before completion, and completion is when I get to go inhabit the place. My solicitor is being evasive and non-committal but still frustratingly nice so it's difficult to direct my impatience effectively. I want to pick up the phone and yell at someone, but there's no one I can think of calling who could actually help. God? I guess this is what God and talk radio are for. Anyway, in a beautifully poetic and serendipitous moment, walking around Putney in the sunshine this weekend I came across this lovely clock, which looks like it should be hanging on the wall of the lunchroom of some ultra grim factory in 1962. And I thought, that's the clock for me. At least if I have to wait indefinitely I'll have something nice to look at.

Tuesday 5 April 2011

So Long, Rocking Chair





So I suppose I've made amends with the fact that this beauty will never be mine. She played a prominent role in my latest living room fantasy (the fantasy where everything in my living room is made of teak) but I guess that's the nature of Ebay - it's cut throat and it doesn't care about your sappy dreams. Saying that, my sister did give me some sage advice which made me hesitate in placing a bid - never buy a chair you haven't tried out first, because there's no way of telling whether it's comfortable until you actually put your butt on it. I suppose a sofa is different because even if it's desperately uncomfortable you can always lie down. That's certainly my preferred approach. I guess the whole spinster-in-a-rocking chair look is probably a little tired anyway. Got to find a new shtick, and a new fantasy chair.

My now habitual cruising of the internet for home decor means those intuitive Google banner ads offer a ceaseless conveyor belt of beautiful furniture that I probably want or think I might want, and certainly want to get a closer look at. It's like they know I've become a total bore and think it's funny to mock me. Being prone to suggestion and a compulsive new tab opener this basically means that anything I ever try to do online that doesn't involve looking at coffee tables is inevitably sidelined. For many, many hours. It was one of those banner ads that led me to these, however.



I ordered four to make allowances for the fact that I will definitely break three of them in the 35 years it takes me to repay my mortgage. I've got something to eat my meals-for-one off - it's a start.

Sunday 3 April 2011

Pre-emptive Ebaying

Now that the mortgage has been officially approved (although the literature the lender posted to me states in about six different ways how they could withdraw the offer, steal my stuff and spread nasty rumours about me all over town at any time if they get hormonal or are just feeling mean), it leaves me grasping for other things to focus my anxiety on. People have been telling me since I began this whole process that brokers are filthy liars, solicitors are lazy jerks, estate agents are moronic, vendors are insane, the place you're buying probably has a chronic bedbug infestation and a crack den in the attic which the blurb on the promo sheet fails to mention. The general consensus is that buying property is a giant, quenchless, nervous-breakdown-inducing money sponge and once you get your toes wet there's no hope of mercy or satisfaction until, months down the line, you finally manage to drag yourself wearily over the threshold.

Having said that, I decided to do it anyway. I fell in love with a flat which got the seal of approval from regular and property savvy friends. I went to see a broker for advice who's handsomeness proved a great distraction from the boring things coming out of his mouth. I was lucky enough to find a solicitor who had just finished a sale in the same block, who happens to be really lovely and, so far, not lazy or a jerk. Sometimes I feel like emailing her just to say hi. The estate agent is definitely a moron but it's fun when clichés come true now and then. Everything is going suspiciously well. The tension I've been cultivating needs a place to live too and right now that place is Ebay. You know what's stressful? Seeing furniture you like on Ebay when you don't have a flat to put it in yet. When something you like the look of is gone, it's gone, and shopping regret is on a par with food regret ('why didn't I eat that other piece of bacon?! I'm going to regret this for the rest of my life') in terms of how sad it makes me.

Just LOOK at this dining set, for example.

On the one hand, I want it so much it makes me want to cry. On the other hand, I don't live in my flat yet and couldn't really say if it's the right table for the space. On the other hand though, I want it. But on a third hand, I'm really very fickle and might hate it in a few days. I have already had to cancel an order for a ridiculously expensive coffee table which I bought on a Haribo high last week. Nobody warned me about this part.