The Same but Different: Our Old Sitting Room

When I was doing my post about our kitchen the other day I had to riffle through all our old photos from when we were buying our current house and in the process I found this picture of the sitting room in our old flat.

I loved this room. Green really is one of my favourite interiors colours and this room was painted in Breakfast Room Green by Farrow & Ball*. We were quite tempted to use it again in this house but thought we should try something new... so we went for Green Smoke by Farrow & Ball instead (not quite adventours enought to move away from green).



This was mine and Hugh's first home together so many of the things were bought and collected together specifically for this room... they then got moved and had to just fit into our current house.
I had a little wander around yesterday and took some photos of where things are now... (and simultaneously reminded myself of quite how hard it is to get decent interior photos).

1. The chandelier / 2. Curtains / 3. Mirror / 4. Wall mounted cabinet / 5. 'Agapanthus & Pineapple' painting / 6. Mantlepice paintings and objects / 7. Rug & Sofa / 8. Nursing chair / 9. Ercol nesting tables / 10. Garfield lunch box / 11. A roll of fabric

Chandelier



This was the very first big purchase that Hugh and I made when we bought our flat (practical as ever). It's made by the Italian company Flos and was actually designed way back in 1958 by Gino Sarfatti. We decided not to put it in the sitting room in this house, instead it's is our kitchen (and we are still looking for a decent light for the sitting room). Hugh is on a mission to find good looking LED bulbs for it... it is currently a 450w light fitting, kind of crazy. In this case I'm loath to change the bulbs until we find the right ones... eco vs aesthetics. 

The Mirror



We originally bought this mirror at Alfies Antiques Market. When we moved we tried to put it in our bedroom (and took this one bad photo of it back in 2011) but it didn't quite work. It was the perfect size for our old mantlepiece but it just doesn't work so well in any of our rooms here. I actually took it to a local auction room to see if we could put it in a sale but they only thought they'd get about £100 for it which didn't feel like it was enough. I'm sentimentally attached to it I suppose so it's currently leaning on the wall in our spare bedroom. Looking at that photo I'm wondering if we should put it back in the bedroom afterall?

Wall Mounted Cabinet / Sofa / Rug





The little cabinet... this is an annoying one. It's currently just leaning against the wall in our sitting room as it's locked and we've lost the key! I need to try to find someone who can unlock it for us so that we can hang it and put things in it.
The rug and sofa are now both in our new sitting room - along with the cushions that my sister kindly made us from left over curtain fabric and in fact the curtains themselves too. The fabric is Pinks & Roses by William Morris and two sets of the three pairs we originally had are now in our sitting room here. I still need to let them down by about an inch so they fit perfectly. It's one of those jobs that seems to permanently sit at the bottom of my to-do list.


 Mantlepiece paintings and objects



Two of the pictures from our old mantlepiece are also on our new sitting room mantlepiece. I bought the little woodcut tree picture from my Godfather to give to Hugh for his 30th birthday, and the butterflies by Hugh gave to me for my 30th. They are Postman butterflies made from old letters and  postage stamps by an artist called Tracey Bush.  The other objects from our old mantle are scattered around the house but I think that the Tjord Bontji plate should really be added to our kitchen plate wall.
The other new pictures above are more recent - the main picture is a print from Society 6 by Angela Dalinger and the birds are by Fred Thomaseli.

Agapanthus & Pineapple Painting



The big 'Agapanthus & Pineapple' painting is by Sarah Bowman (I wrote about it back here) now on our kitchen wall.... it could be in our new sitting room, but I think we get to enjoy it more having it in the kitchen.

Victorian Nursing Chair



The Nursing chair was inherited from my grandmother and is now in our bathroom - when the children are bigger and less in danger of spreading sticky mess everywhere I'm going to get this re-covered.

Ercol nesting tables


The Ercol nesting tables are still standing in as bedside tables, I wrote about them ages ago here, including the story of how we came to own them. We really need to find alternative bedside tables so they can go back to the sitting room.

Garfield Lunch Box


The Garfield lunch box bottom left with little Henry here in late 2012. I used this for my packed lunches in primary school and now it's used to store toys... I think it's currently full of old fisher price figures. Coco has used it for packed lunch twice - on her 5th & 6th birthdays - it's kind of known as her birthday lunchbox. I don't think she has any idea who Garfield is.

A Random Roll of Fabric



Finally the fabric pushed under the sofa that was bought for a bargain at a Designers Guild warehouse sale... hmmm a tiny bit was used as the backing to these cushions. Some was used to make fabric bags for Christmas presents; means I must still have this stashed away somewhere.

*When we were choosing the paint colour for this room we were having a tough time deciding between two other greens we liked (maybe 'Cooking Apple Green' & 'Saxon Green'...?) - but arriving at the paint shop late on the Saturday afternoon of a bank holiday weekend we ended up just going with 'Breakfast Room Green' as it was the only one the shop had enough stock of and we were planning on diong the painting on the following two days... goes to show, sometimes it's good to just  allow fate to take it's course...!