There are a few categories of furniture that it seems every self-respecting home decorator should have. Some chippy paint pieces. Something industrial. A Chesterfield. Maybe a persian rug somewhere. And a couple of outsized lamps. Then there’s the mid-century stuff. Get the lot and you may as well just phone up Homes and Antiques right away and have your house featured.

So after my most recent purchase, i reckon i am ticking most of those boxes. The teak sideboard seems to be one of the classic mid-century must-have items. If its Ercol so much the better. Well preserved sideboards are going for around £200 on ebay at the moment. But who needs ebay? I picked up this cute wee thing from a YMCA charity shop for a tenner.

It sits in our hallway, which is a dark place so we need lots of lamps to brighten things up. None of the things on top are actually useful for a hallway, but i wanted it to be more display and also in keeping with the ‘old stuff’ theme. An old typewriter, some random lamps, plants etc. I haven’t found a good place yet for the Nicholas Mosse pottery collection, it feels unsatisfactory to have them all hiding away down here, but as you can see from the previous post, display space is rather at a premium around here. The two chairs on either side proved to the bain of my dad’s recent stay here, when he crashed into them each night en-route to the toilet. But he doesn’t quite appreciate that form over function wins every time!

This old typewriter seems to turn up in every corner of the house!The top compartment opens up and provides an ideal place for putting letters you want to forget about for a few weeks.My original plan was to paint the cabinet, but Gemma put me out of the notion. What do you think?