You may remember in my last blog that we’d purchased a, new to us, 3 1/2 seater reclining sofa for our living room, and we were looking out for a chair of some sort to finish off the seating in the living room.

Firstly I’ll tell you a little more about the sofa we purchased. We had noticed the advertisement on Buy and Sell for the sofa we ended up purchasing. I’ll show you the sofa as it appeared in the ad.

Seriously, this was how it was photographed and offered for sale. The sofa sort of looked ok, but it was advertised for $2000 and, quite honestly – does it look like it was in any way a loved and cared for piece of furniture. We suspected it was probably being advertised by someone who lived in a mixed rental house, a party house. Anyway the same ad kept popping up, and finally they dropped the price considerably. We made contact, and ended up purchasing the sofa.

When we inspected the sofa, yes, it needed a clean and some leather conditioner to be applied, but it clearly hadn’t been neglected to the point where it couldn’t be bought back to ‘as new’ condition. Upon arriving home with it we set about giving it a deep clean. It was clear that one end of the sofa had been the favourite. Down the arm were bits of toys, beer bottle tops, and what looked like the remains of a squashed meat pie – yes you read that correctly, a squashed meat pie. Now, why on earth would someone not clean up an item they were hoping to sell for a good price, and why would they present in in room full of debris. The mind boggles. Anyway it all cleaned up beautifully, but that pie or whatever it was did take a bit of elbow grease to remove it.

I think you’ll agree that it looks totally different now that it’s been cleaned up, is in a room not surrounded by debris, and has a few cushions and home comforts around it.

Our chosen chair to complete the furnishing of the room arrived today. As you can see King Tilly has taken rather a fancy to it. He’s barely been off it since it arrived.

The little bookcase wasn’t something we’d planned on keeping, but it sort of works where it is. It provides a bit of storage, as well as place to sit my afternoon cuppa.

The main reason though that I’ve kept the little bookcase is so as to have a place to showcase our Royal Doulton, Orange, Chelsea Pensioner which we inherited from Paul’s dad. We had always admired the little man when staying at Paul’s dad’s place in the UK. However, we didn’t want him! We had nothing orange for him to go with, and besides another good friend of theirs really, really wanted him. We insisted that they give the statue to their friends. Paul’s dad didn’t listen, and carefully packed it into his suitcase on his last trip out to visit us. We’ve since had him hidden away in a cupboard. I’ve decided to let him see the light of day, and am planning to add a few orange touches juxtaposed against the lime green so as he’ll ‘fit in’. I have some artificial orange wild flowers on top of the book case, and I’m on the look out for one more little nic-nac for the bottom left shelf (currently we have a red plastic container there full of screws from a piece of furniture Paul’s doing up). Then one orange scatter cushion for on the sofa, and, two throw rugs with some orange in them to replace the grey ones. Sounds easy, but orange isn’t a current in trend decorating colour, so it’s hard to find. But I’ll enjoy looking, and once found that should complete the living room for this round of decorating. We’re happy with it, and King Tilly is certainly getting a lot pleasure out of what he clearly thinks is his new throne. I’ll put him straight tomorrow – it’s my chair!