When I moved into my first house, many years ago, I was  limited by way of funding.   Having stretched myself to the absolute limit to get the mortgage and settle all those annoying extras that still come as a bit of a surprise, despite my conveyancing solicitors best efforts to explain all.  Searches . . .  looking into whether the house was likely to fall into some sinister planning loophole or new road scheme compulsory purchase nightmare, or had any odd covenants on the property or the extensive garden and land attached.    So having cleared all these hurdles and found enough cash to move in,  I then had to start in earnest to get a few sticks of furniture together.  Obviously I was expected to gratefully accept all the old brown furniture that all the grandparents, great aunts and uncles known and unknown, had seen fit to keep forever.   Some of these offerings were passable and I gratefully accepted not only the proffered tables, wardrobes, chests of drawers, tall-boys and side tables,   but some of the ugly tat too just to be able to get a favourite uncle to hire a van and move it all for me.

After many years and several house moves later, I reached a point in my life when I could afford to jetison the heavy old brown stuff and buy that dream sideboard I’d seen in one of the top stores a couple of years ago and was now on sale at a very reasonable price in a discount warehouse near me.  What luck.  this gorgeous light coloured real oak beauty was available, together with a very nearly perfect matching dining table.  Sensing a possible sale, the manager measured both items and sent me home with said figures and one of his own steel tape measures to check that the sideboard would fit into the space planned.  It did and the table would be smaller than the one it would replace.  Oh my word, being able to buy these two items of oak furniture made me crazily happy and I still love them both.