Furniture shopping no go

So on Sunday morning we raced off to Ilva to purchase a few items, namely a dining table, possibly a corner lounge suite, some rugs and a pile of these cute Arne Jacobson style kids chairs (which were down from £16.99 to a tenner) only to find the place had been well and truly picked over. There was virtually nothing left. Rob was miffed and mortified. I was surprised. I thought there'd be more stock as the receivership news was only made public last week. I guess this credit crunch means people are keen to buy mountains of stuff they don't really need if it's 50% cheaper than usual.

I'm glad we went though, because if we'd waited a couple of weeks then the place really would've been empty and Rob would've blamed me "If we'd gone in the first weekend we'd have found everything!" Ack. Back to Ikea and Habitat then I guess.

Our builder was meant to start work this week but we still haven't had the final quote in from him, any day now I'm told, and then we need to have a meeting with him and the architect.

In other news, I got the company who's manufacturing our extension glass to re-quote and it's now nearly £1,600 more than four months ago (due to the Euro strengthening, and the cost of petrol etc - the glass is made in Germany). Ouch. That's the cost of a Velux window and installation... something's gotta give.

Furniture shopping?

Ilva, the Danish answer to Ikea, is in receivership in the UK. They'll be closing down when the stock runs out in about six to eight weeks. I'm a bit sad as actually I quite liked some of the stuff in Ilva. It's more expensive than Ikea but the shopping experience was less fraught - there were never that many people in the store (maybe that's why they're in receivership). In my opinion their marketing let them down - Rob and I are frequent visitors to Ikea in Thurrock (in Essex) but until about a year ago we had no idea that there was a massive retail park just down the road. Of course this is where Ilva is based, but we didn't know that. Listing your address as "Thurrock" isn't really useful to the sat nav.

Once we'd found Ilva we were pleased that it stocked essentially cheaper "homages" to the stuff we actually like, but can't afford just yet. We're fans of mid-century designers (isn't everybody?) and obviously would like to own the originals rather than knock-offs, or reproductions… but that's not going to happen any time soon.

Pictured is the table we'll probably buy, it's on sale for £60. Our current dining table is a cherry wood extendable thing from Habitat which we'll leave in the flat when we rent it out. It cost nine times the Ilva table but we just can't be bothered moving it cos it'll be massively heavy (and the movers would have to negotiate tricky concrete stairs, recipe for disaster).

Bargain of the century

So today was spent as Saturdays often are by people in the throes of a house renovation: hurtling up the A13 to visit every "retail park" that was open. We managed to cover off Gallions Reach (waste of time, and wow, what a revolting smell - thanks to a nearby sewage treatment plant), the Beckton Triangle (so-so), the Gateway Retail park (I wish these last two places would have proper websites with full store listings) and finally Lakeside.

We were on a mission to find the perfect fridge, widescreen TV, bathroom tiles, carpet and various items of furniture. Most of the things we were after you can track down online for less than you'd pay in-store, but we wanted to see things In Real Life first.

The reason for this post is that in our current abode we have had the same black and white zebra print rug for nearly nine years and it's clearly seen better days (well, the white bits have). The last time we were at Ilva we'd hesitated over spending £199 on a new rug. Today however, I was feeling particularly fed up with our zebra rug and was interested in checking out what was on offer.

To my horror the pattern we'd liked when we visited a few months ago wasn't on display, so I started to sort through the piles of miscellaneous stock. A few of the rugs were on sale. And eventually I found the patterned rug we'd liked but it was missing it's price tag. After a bit of rummaging I found a rogue tag - it said £50 for "green cross". I called over an assistant. Yes, the rug is indeed green cross, what's more... "You can have it brand new for £50 or if you don't mind taking the one that's been on the shop floor as a display rug for a few hours (it was laid out this morning) then it's £25." Well heck, it's virtually free at that price. I couldn't believe our luck and promptly inspected the rug (absolutely fine) and freed it from Ilva's cavernous clutches.

The celebratory dinner we had at Nando's afterwards cost more than the rug.