Rainy sunday

My mum is very excited about our recent antics with RH magazine, but I bet her pals are going to be a bit puzzled when it comes out - a bit bare, no curtains or carpets, and white plastic chairs in the dining room. You can't move in her house for velvet curtains, dried flowers and bits of strange tat she's picked up from car boot sales. In fact the wooden shoe lasts on our hearth were a gift from her - I quite like them but my husband thinks they are yet another example of the chintz and clobber (eg cushions) I am ruining the house with...!

What is interesting about my mum's taste for chintz is that my grandfather was an architect and built his own house in the 1950s. It was demolished before I was born to make way for a housing estate but in the very few family photos that survive it looks fantastic - bare brick internal walls and plain wooden fittings. Their taste was very austere - that Ercol and G-plan furniture that is very covetable now but most of which which my gran got rid of when she downsized after his death in the 1990s. I've asked my mum to dig some photos out for me. I'm wondering if her own taste for Victoriana is a reaction to her childhood, in the same way that I can't bear anything reminiscent of 1980s brown-and-cream Laura Ashley...and does that mean that our children will be putting back all that 'original' swirly carpet and flocked wallpaper when they move into their 'terribly dated and noughties' first flats? I can see it now"

'' It was awful!' remembers Anna, " It had last been decorated in 2009 and the owners hadn't done a thing since. It was painted a dull white throughout, with boring wooden floors and no curtains to hide the huge bare windows. I have worked hard to bring back some original 1980s intimacy to the place, with richly textured contrasting curtains and carpet, and beautiful ruched patterned curtains, with lacy nets to block out some of the overpowering light. We also lowered the ceilings to create a cosier feel..."