My (Potential) New Flat

This past Saturday, Mark and myself went and saw what may soon be our new flat. After sneaking around the complex as if we were doing something illicit, we finally asked the lady in the office if we could go see it, and she handed over the keys as if she knew we were coming. So we went back into the building (this time less sneakily as we were carrying keys), up the stairs to the 4th (3rd if you're Anglo!) floor and opened up the door. It was an exciting moment!

To spare you a drawn-out mental walk-through, let's just say there's a couple closets, a bathroom, a bedroom, and a living room with a kitchen off of it. Oh, and a big balcony! We spent quite a bit of time walking around and closely examining things. The kitchen is quite big, as is the living room. The bedroom isn't the biggest, but doing the 'lie down on the floor to pretend it's a bed test' (as learned on Location, Location, Location), I determined that it's a bit bigger than I had imagined.

Then there's the view. While the first thing you notice is the large number of tracks down below, if you look straight out, being all up on the 4th floor, you're higher than all of the old townhouses in the area. At the time I termed it 'quite Mary Poppins', only at the time I didn't see anyone dancing around on the roofs. Alas, I'll have to keep eyes peeled.

Of course, one thing I couldn't help but notice how much work will be required and how many things will need to be purchased to get the place up so snuff. For example, a light bulb hanging on a cord above my imaginary future dining table just won't do. Nor will having plain white walls everywhere. And I'm going to require some sort of device to cover the windows. Needless to say, yesterday afternoon Mark and I went into every home store on King's Road and spent over an hour in John Lewis, then picked up some home magazines on the way back. I then continued to rip out pictures from said magazines and the John Lewis catalogue so I could start putting my look together. While I'm pretty sure whatever I attempt will just end up looking like a bit of an unorganized mess, I assure you I'm at least making an effort to make the place look nice and homely, yet with the edge or urban chic. And perhaps most importantly, trying to ensure it doesn't look too girly. Girly, sure, too girly, no. So yes, I've quickly become one of those people who walks around the lighting section at stores with the confused look on their face going 'who on earth buys this stuff?' before finding the one little tiny area where they sell normal looking light fixtures...

So if you have any ideas or things I should be looking at (and no, there's no Pottery Barn in England, sad, I know), please let me know!