Jumble

We had a painter/decorator in our house for a few weeks and he’s just about finished the first tranche of rooms - the family room, piano room, and living room are done. They look great. However, what I’m struck by is the fact that the rooms aren’t really transformed…they’re nice, but they still look fundamentally the same. My wife has posited (and I’m inclined to agree with her) that it’s because our furniture is the same. I don’t know about everybody else’s furniture, but ours is a real hodgepodge. When we bought our first house in Sweden, we didn’t have much furniture and so we agreed to buy whatever was in the house at the time. That gave us a bed, some sideboards, a rug or two, a coffee table, two armchairs, and a sofa. All well and good, but now they’re all nearing seven years in our possession, and an unknown amount of time in somebody else’s. What’s more, they were chosen (possibly from IKEA) with a small Stockholm apartment in mind, rather than our current Yorkshire farmhouse…