"We like IKEA too, as much for the fish & chips as the flat-pack crap with with we furnish our home (the odd antique notwithstanding)"

Your house (from the photys & tubeys you've posted) looks like a magic grotto. The only stuff from IKEA I really fancy is their err 'storage solutions' so I could get my tonnes of stuff tidied up. Otherwise I don't dig the new and spartan thing much at all (echoes of Fight Club).

I don't really have the cash for proper antiques, but I do love tatty second hand stuff. By far the best bit of junk I bought lately was a large solid pine welsh dresser from one of the smellier charity shops, cost me £40 (period gaudy orange varnish at no extra cost) I was well chuffed, so functional & useful - plus the cats like to use it as a climbing frame.

I was planning to strip it, or do something Jocasta-Inneseque with it, but the sheer nostalgia of that classic seventies toffee-apple coating has thus far made me resist any attempts to aesthetically 'improve' it.