Houses are strange, deceptive things. When you see even a large house simply marked out on its foundations, it looks quite small. Once a house is built, even a modestly sized one can look quite spacious when it is completely empty. Start filling it with furniture, though and the space rapidly shrinks to being potentially inadequate. Casa Libélule being a decidedly modest space, we are acutely aware that we need to select space efficient furniture.
Last week we had been very lucky when the first dining room furniture we had seen had proved instantly appealing to both of us and had been available in suitably modest sizes. Now Francine and I were off in search of sofas. We had measured and theorized and figured that we could just about manage two 2-seater settees if they didn’t exceed 2m each in length. There are two conflicting trends that I’ve noticed in the UK. Firstly, houses are being built ever smaller and secondly furniture seems to be being designed ever bigger. What madness is this? Anyway, we crossed our fingers and sallied forth to another furniture shop we’d been directed to in Calpe.
I hesitate to liken Aitana in Spain to Homebase in the UK, the latter carrying a large amount of substandard tat, but in terms of the range of types of items sold, imagining a Spanish Homebase will give you the idea. Just up the quality levels a bit. We wasted time rummaging around the hardware sections before finally finding our way down to the sofas and beds department. Here we were met by a delightfully helpful young lady who claimed to have just un poco Inglés; she was, of course, pretty damned fluent, fortunately for us. Francine explained that we were looking for two 2-seater sofas that were not too large.
The second or third sofa that we were shown appealed. It appealed even more when we realised that it came in at 1.60m long, saving us 40cms of manoeuvring room in our living space. With Francine hitting all of 5ft 3ins, several seating solutions, must be discounted because her feet don’t reach the floor. :)) Happily, not only was this sofa suitably short but it was suitably low, too. Francine looked comfortably seated. Pricing varied according to the material used to cover them, there being two ranges. The more expensive option used a leather-like material which we really liked and which would have looked good, we thought. Colour could be difficult, though, needing to avoid a clash with the wood of the dining suite, so our helpful assistant let us drive off with the material samples to check them against the display items where we had ordered our table and chairs. What a nice lady!
The colour was fine but, on our way back to Aitana, sense took hold and we decided to go for the cheaper material solution. This is a holiday home, after all, and the 300€ saving would buy a couple of very sexy modern LED lamps that we’d fallen in love with whilst on our trip. OK, so the sense was short lived. 😀
We placed our order for two 2-seaters that will hopefully be ready very soon after we return in the middle of March, delivery time being about 5-6 weeks, as usual.
One instinctively knows when something is correct. 😉 I was beginning to feel an uncommon run of good fortune in the shopping department.
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