Why are wooden letters so popular?... What are your decorative bugbears?

[Whirliwig72]

One of my pet hates are the ubiquitous decorative wooden letters featured in every homes magazine and style magazine since forever. They just seem so unoriginal to me especially when they spell out the action to be performed in the room they are put in, i.e E....A....T in the kitchen, L....O...V...E in the bedroom, C...R...A...P in the loo and so on as if the inhabitants might forget what happens where without 3 foot high gold letters reminding them at every possible occasion.
I also have a dislike of most wall transfers and also of feature walls decorated with flock or metallic wallpaper - stinks of 'Chavez' IMHO.

What decorative horrors make you shudder?

Ahhh, don't worry about it Gwendoline, lovely. The point is it's your home, yours, and it's not done up to delight anyone else. I've got alot of the things listed here (and worse) and I couldn't care less if people are being snarky. SO WHAT? I love my house.

All the mickey-taking is done with tongue firmly in cheek, and if it's not then they're nasty fuckers and I care even less about their opinions.

Any sort of decorative words just make me think of home decorating for those with dementia- especially when it's on crockery- Soup, Toast, Pasta.

Union Jacks just make me think of the Rev. Ian Paisley.

I went and bought an ugly armchair yesterday from my local YMCA for £25, but its big and squashy (and will look passable with my indian bedthrow chucked on it) I like my DFS leather sofas but I yearn for fabric comfort. It will be godsend in the summer.

I like to use these threads as a warning. I don't want a fashionable house nor do I want an old fashioned house, it's a home.

The first time we all saw bunting/the keep calm poster/spanish dancing lady loo roll cover you go through the assessment process: Eg Pedlers Fox pouffe
That's novel/ caught my eye
Do I like it?
Would it fit in my home?
Can I afford it or do I have to cobble together my own version out of roadkill.

By the time we've seen 5 years worth of Sunday supplement interiors with keep calm bunting, we're all a bit bored of it.

I prefer photos to be smaller than a4 and in stand up frames on surfaces. Can be posed then. Any photos of people more than life sized freak me out a bit.

Gwendoline they probably won't give a monkeys about whose house is smaller or bigger and if they do, then they are not worth worrying about. Please stop worrying about what the other mums think of your house...life really is too short.

They're too busy judging the cleanliness of your loo to worry about your bunting anyway

Oh God ...

:o

People who have immaculate hallways with no sign of jackets, shoes, keys, post dog leads etc...

Where do they put all their stuff?

I really dislike the canvases you seem to be able to get everywhere now - normally a set of 3 in some dull colour/pattern/floral design. They're so unoriginal and bland!

like this

Of an evening, Saltire's sil will be able to rearrange her letters, countdown style, to read:

GASH

Or

HAGS

Another one who dislikes those studio photos. I think it's a little vain.

So what does everyones house actually look like then?We have a corner sofa(not leather though)we have white furniture,nautical themes,shabby chic,Emma Bridgewater and Cath Kidston!
Im with whoever said argos style furnniture,but apart from that,what do your houses actually look like?
I dont really have any decorating bugbears except avacado bathroom suites and chipboard/artex on walls,apart from that im easy to please!

My next door neighbour's house is an homage to expensive taste. It's completely perfect on every room. Vast Smallbone kitchen (even her utility room is Smallbone!), velvet carpets, every bathroom is CP Hart - just v high spec & gorgeous.

Her study however has a wall of cupboards with filing cabinets inside iyswim. The façade of these cupboards, however, is in the style of detailed book spines. I'm sure it cost the earth, but, blimey - nafferoonie.

Velvet carpets
I didn't even know they existed!

This is the 2012 version of Twigs and Pebbley Shit.

Philippe Starck ghost chairs

stags heads on the wall

bright glass/plastic chandeliers

I thought only Flavio Briatore had bookshelves with fake books! Is your neighbour Flavio Briatore?

Does anyone remember those duvet covers in faded orange with printed sentences in Japanese? Very late 1990s.

Have noticed people saying they hate DFS sofas. How can you tell? And what's so bad about them?

I didn't say it but I have hated every sofa I've ever seen on a tv advert. So odds-on I'd hate the DFS ones, assuming they put their 'best' on the advert.

But no, I'd not be able to tell if a plain white fabric sofa came from Ikea, DFS or wherever.

I have just bought a DFS brown leather corner sofa off Ebay. Haven't collected it yet and already feel like MN are pointing and laughing at me!

OOh P Starck Ghost chairs...don't like I'm afraid!

I once made a dreadful faux pas with a colleague when she was renovating a new house at the same time as me, she asked 'Who makes those chairs which are like Regency style but made of perspex?' and I said 'Oh you mean those hideous Phillipe Starck ones?' and immediately went as I realised she actually liked them...things were never the same again after that and I had to sit opposite her :(

I find Phillipe Starck annoying for other reasons too, but really I'd far rather have stayed on the right side of my colleague (she was senior to me) than blurt out I hated the damn Ghost chairs...

. I think that's praps a bit ott. I don't like corner sofas or leather (veggie) but lots of people do. I do lots of the things that people hated up there ^^^. FFS, I sell vintage tat and make bloody bunting .
It wouldn't occur to me to be bothered that some internet pixie didn't like what's in my home. They're never going to see it. And anyway, I'm busy curling my lip at their coloured loo paper or something anyway.

That was to hocus btw

I love my house (which is in fact a flat, totally frowned upon on MN, but in Milan you just get flats and mine is bloody amazing), I am perfectly aware that we don't all share the same tastes.