…we have a son returning home! Son no. 3 has spent most of the last ten years studying & living away, though he’s been home for holidays when in the UK. But he’s finally run out of stipend, hopefully having completed his thesis, and will be returning to the family fold imminently. And the bedroom required for a 28-year-old academic is not the bedroom that the 18-year-old student left behind…

It’s a different room, for a start. He used to have the smallest bedroom at the top of the stairs, but now the bigger, downstairs room that’s functioned as the guest room for the last ten years is more appropriate. He has a large collection of academic reference books to accommodate; my poor husband has already remarked many times that our elder daughter & I should just go & live in a library, so there isn’t much spare bookcase-space available. He will be job-hunting and keeping up to date in his field, so the room needs to work as a serious study as well as a bedroom.

He sent through a plan of how he thought it could be laid out, and as a little joke, included a wing-back chair, Sherlock-Holmes-style. It just so happens that I am always rescuing a certain make of old wing-back chair for an upholsterer friend, who re-makes them into the most fabulous, desirable & comfortable chairs going. But alas, all my usual sources are closed just now, so I put a request on Freecycle, not expecting anything as there were several listed locally on Ebay at exceedingly silly prices, i.e. more than my friend asks for them after she’s done them up professionally. To my astonishment, I got a reply within the hour, and picked up a modern, but very comfortable, reclining wingback chair the next day, for free. Joke returned! We may never get him out of there, though…

Then the hunt was on for serious bookcases. I answered an advert on Facebook Marketplace, for a tall painted wooden bookcase from a certain Scandinavian emporium. They did say it needed some TLC, but it was priced very reasonably at £10. We squeezed it into my van & bore it home triumphantly, but on closer inspection, though very heavy & originally very sturdy, it was actually particle-board and had been left outside for too long; the damage to the weight-bearing base was irreversible. But it hasn’t gone to waste; the shelves and one side have gone up into the loft as loft-boarding where there wasn’t any, and the damaged side has been trimmed to size & deployed across two (also Scandinvian) tall bedside tables to make a perfect, and rather stylish, laptop desk for my husband to work-from-home on, teamed with a comfortable office chair that came to us via Freegle. I also rescued the dowelling and other fixings from the shelves; they’re pretty standard across the whole range of their furniture, which we have a fair bit of, some of it even bought new. The only bits that went to the tip were the top & bottom trim and the flimsy back-boards.

I spotted an advert for all sorts of free furniture from a big Edwardian house being cleared only about 400 yards away from us. Old stuff, lovely quality, but mostly much too big & dark for modern homes. But there were two tall bookcases… I dashed off a polite request & heard straight back; the chap organising the clearance was upcountry, but thought they were a pretty standard size, i.e. 6′ tall x 3′ wide, so I replied that we would love to give both of them a home, please. So we went to pick them up from his brother the next day; they’re absolutely lovely in a shabby-chic sort of way, but actually over 7′ tall and well over 3′ wide! Only one would fit into the bedroom, but we’ve managed to make space for the other one in the hallway, replacing two smaller bookcases, one of which has also gone into the bedroom.

But he also needs a desk. And not the neat little desk that’s been in there all along; it needs to accommodate his laptop, a couple of big reference books plus notebooks, pens etc. and have plenty of space underneath for restless legs. However, add in the bed, wardrobe & a large chest of drawers (with small bookcase on top) and the remaining space is limited; 4’/120cm wide by about 20″/50cm deep is about all that will fit. Suggestions have been winging their way through the ether, but nothing ready-made has yet hit the spot in terms of style or size; he desperately doesn’t want white-on-white. However, a couple of days ago I picked up a Gumtree’d “Freebie” black desk top, also originally from the Scandinavian emporium, may their name be ever-blessed; I knew you could still buy legs to fit it very reasonably. So they’ve been ordered, and the desk top cut to size; it turned out to be easier to cut particleboard than I’ve always thought, given a decent jig-saw. I’ve added a board at the back to stop stuff falling off, as it’s side-on to the doorway. So, there will be a desk, which will have cost next-to-nothing, and *** It Will Do *** until he finds one of his own choosing, or the job of his dreams and moves out again!

After Christmas, when he announced he’d be returning home for some indefinable length of time, I was panicking mightily that I’d have to spend quite a lot of money on new furniture that really needs to be spent maintaining my van, as I’ve earned next-to-nothing over the last year & will need to go out & sell stuff on virtually every fine day this summer. But given time & access to a computer, I’ve been able to assemble bits & bobs that fit the bill for very nearly nothing. Thank you so very, very much, to all Freecycle/Freegle volunteers, Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace!