Sourcing Furniture...
I am sure you will all agree how difficult sourcing furniture can be, unless you are an extremely knowledgable interior designer with a wealth of contacts and very deep pockets.
Let’s face it, to have the perfect room that vibes well, and has a good synergy, that feels cosy and is practical, its all down to the furniture that you decide to put in it.
We want to put our hands up and say :
a) we don’t have deep pockets (yes we will occasionally splurge on a beautiful item that just works but we cant do that with everything)
b) we sometimes get it wrong and its ok to accept that and learn from it (just try not to let it be on the expensive items!)
We are true believers that a room can look a million dollars without spending that much! We have to think like that, as we have many many rooms to do at My Tiny Estate and we have to think outside the box…. up-cycling, recycling, and buying smart.
You will be thinking go on then tell us what you do and how you do it?
Alright - so lets start from the basics, the room itself, imagine the room with no furniture, does the space work, does the colour of the walls make you happy, are you adding detailing to make the space more interesting…. panelling, a picture rail or coving? Do you already have some beautiful features you want to expose? Oak beams, fireplaces, beautiful floors? What about your skirting board, architraves, windows, doors? - Right I know we start every room from the bare bones but Dean ALWAYS says "a room should look good without any furniture in it", and so here is where we start with the design.
We have the room, now what?
Locate your key furniture:
Your key furniture is the centre piece of the room - you know the piece, where your eyes always go to when you walk into the space, for example the sofa in the living room, the bed in the bedroom, the dining table etc etc. The signature pieces are so important to get right as we spend a lot of time looking at them.
I am not going to lie we spent HOURS researching for a sofa for the lounge of the Caretakers Cottage and we had lots of chats about it without any agreements.
Let me tell you our predicaments…. the Caretakers Cottage will be rented out as a holiday accommodation (so it helps us pay for the running costs of the estate). When we do every cottage in the estate we always said that we should be happy to live in it ourselves (and we like to think we have high standards) and so that reflects on how we do it and we make the majority of our decisions as if it were our forever home. This way guests that stay, feel at home, but that means that the sofa (and other furniture) won’t have the same treatment as if it were your own. So my ideas of linen sofas were thrown out the window!
Did I tell you that Dean is an Architect? Yes he is, a very good one! (dont tell him I said that!) anyway as good as he is, he would rather have a sofa that has “lines that flow’ and be a beautiful centre piece. The comfort is a technicality that he just isn’t bothered about! You know them sofas, so uncomfortable you would rather sit on the floor… yes well we had one of them! I have lived with Dean for many years and our houses always had very 'aesthetically pleasing furniture’ and my back did not like how the “lines flow” so I said - “ok Dean I am going to stick my oar in and it must be comfortable!”.
Yes I did put my foot down for the sake of our future guests (and their backs), you are welcome if you ever stay in the cottage!
We realised after many hours of researching the internet that we needed help. We knew what we wanted it to look like but the fabric and comfort was something we definitely needed some further advice on. You spend many hours sitting on a sofa (if you are lucky!) and we had so many requirements, so we got in touch with a lovely company called Sofas & Stuff
Conveniently for us they opened a new showroom in The Mailbox in Birmingham (which is close by). That meant we could go and try the sofas (an important thing to do when considering comfort) TICK!
We could also speak with someone knowledgeable about sofas and help guide us in the right direction. TICK! TICK!
They are also all made in England. TICK, TICK, TICK!!! (I dont know why but that always is a big plus point for us, perhaps because it feels more bespoke, more considered, more authentic for our estate?!)
So we organised to pop into their showroom and took with us a a painted skirting board, a sample of our floor and the colour of our walls! We really needed to get it right!
James the Showroom manager was so amenable to our requirements, we sat down with him and explained our situation, the size of the room that we were looking at a sofa for, and how the sofa would most likely be used.
James came out immediately with the word ‘Smart Cotton’ which is a fabric that they use, that is very hard wearing and stain proof! - "Have you got smart linen?" I asked - Ok it doesn’t exist but I had to try!
There were SO MANY different options with fabrics that unless you knew exactly what you wanted I would advise to narrow it down, saying what colour you think and if you want pattern or solid colours as otherwise you could literally be there for hours.
After I saw the Alwinton Sofa I knew it was the one I wanted! I looked at Dean and he looked back at me with a half smile of approval! (For an English person that’s the same as a Spanish person jumping up and down with joy) He felt the same!! Did we actually make a decision?!
Please, please, please be comfortable!! At that point I was starting to convince myself that comfort is overrated if the sofa looks good! Dean’s brainwashing clearly working on me! We sat down and sunk into the sofa, honestly the most comfortable sofa of my life!! Ok it was not that hard after living with sofas that look good but were solid as a rock! It was a great all around sofa though and we knew it had ticked all the boxes. Most importantly a perfect style for the caretakers cottage.
We went home and James gave us some samples of the colours that we liked so we could appreciate at home with the different lights and how the colour varied, which was an incredibly good advice!
I have explained to you “how we met our sofa” because we believe that this is extremely important to get good advice for the key pieces for your home like sofas and beds! You need to try it before you buy it! And we couldn’t recommend Sofas & Stuff enough. Thanks James! You are a bloody superstar.
Ok we had the sofa! Now what?
We got a big rug from Ikea, which was not expensive and is made with natural materials. We felt that if it gets ruined we could always get a new one without breaking the bank!
Then we needed the coffee table.. We had so many ideas! We checked on google, facebook market place, ebay, but nothing. Then we found an old table in the stables which was very large and we repurposed it! - instant love! This room was coming together!
The room is really feeling cosy now! We still have to source side lamps for ambient light and a few bits and bobs. We occasionally see items we really like in a shop and if they are too expensive and they are quite simple in construction we attempt at making them. I don’t remember the last time we bought a complete side lamp without adjusting it whatsoever!?
We have started to go to charity shops, and second hand furniture places as many times as we can to find stunning pieces. We love the idea of repurposing items that must have an amazing story and history. Obviously the recycling, avoiding landfill etc just is the inevitable beneficial side effect!
Our taste might evolve over time but we have always worked with these same principles…
1 - The room has to have enough interest empty
2 - The masterpiece of the room is where you invest your money
3 - Spend your time looking for the unique second hand pieces that make the room stand out and make it special (and is cost effective)
To complete this project we worked in collaboration with Fenwick & Tilbrook, Skirtingworld and Sofas & Stuff