The Road to Sofa Heaven

'Hi, we’re just calling to let you know your sofas are ready for delivery.'

This is a big moment. A moment I have been looking forward to for four years - but I am not feeling the love.

'Oh. They’re not supposed to be ready for another three weeks.' Mild panic sets in. 'We’re in the middle of getting the apartment painted, is there anyway you could hold them for a week?'

'No, sorry, we can’t, we don’t have any storage capacity.'

Panic is definitely moving on from mild. I’m fairly sure her storage capacity is more than mine right now. I have a two bedroom apartment. She has a rather large furniture shop AND a warehouse. AND I have all our bedroom furniture in our lounge as we are getting our bedroom painted and the floor done. Oh and we already have two sofas. Of course, if she had stuck to the plan, the bedroom furniture would be back where it should be; and our old sofas would be gone. But she didn’t and she is three weeks early; my perfect planning did not allow for that.

Every lounge needs a...double bed?!

And this is the rest of the living space housing more of the bedroom - yup loads of room for two extra sofas!

And this is what the last few weeks have been like. I may be the Interior Design Director of this refurbishment project but I don’t know what I am doing. I may have the creative flair - well some anyway. And I am incredibly organised - this one is just fact. But the trouble is I haven’t done a refurbishment project before and I don’t know what I don’t know. And this little bugger keeps catching me right out.

For example, I ordered the most beautiful curtains and curtain poles. I checked everything over: made sure the measurements of the poles were correct; made sure I had the right finials (love this word...) and brackets; took the curtains out of the packet and checked they were the right size and had the right headings; checked that the fabric colour matched the colour of the new sofas; agreed slot with husband to put curtains up. I know, can you get more organised?! Then when we got everything out to put them up I realised something wasn’t quite right: we didn’t have curtain hooks. I mean, I didn’t even know curtain hooks existed. And in my defence, the description for the curtain poles told me they came with everything I needed - clearly it lied. So scheduled curtain hanging slot (which had to be adhered to or other parts of plan would fall apart) was eaten in to by mad wife running into town to the curtain shop to grill the sales assistant on curtain hooks and how to hang curtains.

But oh so worth it. New sofas are purple...it's going to be a palace I tell you. (Oh and ignore book shelf, that is OBVIOUSLY not going to make the cut...)

But just call me a Trouble Shooter. The bigger the problem is the bigger the bat I get out; nothing is standing in between my and my success as an Interior Design Director. Nothing. (I have shifted two sofas in two days to make space for my new sofas which are being delivered today.) It is like being back at work. I have a budget, I have deadlines and I have a spreadsheet. Okay I don’t have a team, or a boss, or get paid but I'm still important; it is probably the most responsibility I’ve had since I left the corporate world seven years ago!

And this project symbolises the next stage in my transformation programme. We have been making do for so long, living with furniture we did not really like because the alternative was just unthinkable. This is a MAJOR step forward for me.

And for the first time in seven years I feel like I am contributing to Cripps Ltd. As my hypnotherapist said to me 'Interior Designers are really expensive Karen and you’re doing it for free.' Yeah, that’s how great a wife I am, I am not even charging Husband for pulling my weight for the the first time in seven years. I should get an award or something. Ooh a plaque. We could hang it in our new living room.