My bedroom was okay. The furniture was obtained back at a time when I guarded the pennies like a jail-house warden. It wasn’t a top priority to get new furniture ever, after all one only sleeps in ones bedroom, that and.. well.. you know.

When I moved into this apartment the tiny attic room was first used as my studio from where I would work. However, with its slanting roof, lack of big windows and poor ventilation within a few months I decided that swap the studio and my bedroom around. Attic rooms are cool as bedrooms too, and the slanted ceilings aren’t nearly as much of a problem when you’re laying down.

The room lacked ambience though. Cool as it was, it just didn’t have the right ‘feel.’ So I ventured to the hardware store and bought a dark redy brown terracota paint to cover the then white walls. The woodwork around the disused fireplace and skirting board was to be painted ‘Indian dusk’ a very slightly yellow shade of beige. However, budget restrictions being that they were I had to go for the cheap paint, and as so often is the case with cheap paint, the color on the tin simply wasn’t the color that ended up on the wall. The terracota was a deep blood red and the ‘India dusk’ was flat out yellow! Mix that with my blue bedroom carpet and you have yourself an interesting mix. Somehow the color combination worked, and my bedroom was transformed into a very chilled out space indeed, I loved it!

In fact I still love my bedroom, but just as has happened before, I ended up in Ikea and ended up quite involuntarily purchasing new stuff. Stuff for the bedroom.

Now I only bought a couple of wardrobes and a chest of drawers. The old furniture had served me well but the day had come for it to be replaced. The drawers went to my mate Philly (who recently broke his neck without realizing it!) with the old shelves and wardrobe having to be dismantled and burned (I always like a good fire).

However, as much fun as it might be to actually choose new furniture from Ikea, constructing it is a whole other deal. It seemed to be going very well until I realized that I had the base of the first unit on the wrong way round, then a little while later I had to dismantle the unit completely because the holes for the shelves were on the outside! It ended up taking me all night and most of the next day to actually assemble, and reassemble the furniture, de-assemble the old furniture, reorganize the clothes and get everything in place!

In the end though it’s been worth it. The new furniture looks very at home in my fire engine red bedroom which really looks its best when its lit only by candles! Pictures don’t ever seem to really show this room in its best light. So once again I have fed the Ikea animal within. And you know, I never meant to get the new stuff. The only reason I was going to Ikea was to buy a £15 Yucca tree!

Ikea generation