Well this is the bit we love to do ourselves. Each apartment is completely individual and designed by us the owners Charles and Katie Perkins. We start by acquiring interesting old and newish pictures, furniture, mirrors, beds etc etc. A favourite place to look is facebook market place where prices can be great. Though speed is the key as things that are good dont hang around long. Local antique and junk shops can be good, ebay, and local auctions sites. It take 3 months of collecting to find enough stuff to equip a 2 bedroom apartment with suitable size and shaped stuff and we always make sure we have more than we need to ensure the right size item goes in the right place.
We try to make our apartments quirky and interesting with more to look at the more you explore. Things like Dolly the horse in the photo above. Dating from the 20s we believe and with a great colour.
We pick great old pieces of furniture that are cheap as they are out of favour due to their dark colour and upcycle them with chalk paint and bronze highlights. This has become very popular over the last few years and the paint is now easy to find.
We don't favour any particular age of furniture and can you French, oriental, old English what ever looks good. Ideally all mixed together to make a timeless style that will stay in fashion.
Once we put the furniture in position we then start with large mirrors followed by pictures. Large ones look best as they show in the photos best and give the apartment scale. Auctions are cheap for pictures but we also love Homesense for their great range or quirky stuff. Finally we try to use lots of artificial plants to give the place a homely feel. Again Homesense have a great range of realistic looking ones at a price that is reasonable.
We can't wait to start on our next apartment. The collecting has already begun