Furniture and Paint

I'm about to do some serious work on my house, I am being provided with a sum of money to make the house my own but I'm going to have to be rather careful with it if i want to do all the things I fancy so any advice on shops doing good deals on decorating stuff or good places to buy inexpensive but lovely furniture would be gratefully received :-)

I took Tiny to Homebase today, she loves running around the place looking at all the bright colours on the shelves and the pretty wallpapers, but today she had the remit of sitting on sofas and deciding if they were comfortable.  Sadly she doesn't have the greatest idea what comfort is and everything, including the cardboard box she sat on, was declared 'ver contabl mammy' I think I might need to have a bit of a rethink about my selection methods before I actually part with any cash ;-)

I have two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, kitchen and dining room to decorate and I know nothing about what looks good with what and there is no one here to tell me I've got it wrong so the place could look very interesting in a couple of months time!!

First things first though I need a roofer and apparently the north east of England is experiencing a construction boom because I can't find a roofer who can even fit in coming and quoting never mind actually doing the job!  I might buy some slates and get up there and fix it myself in the end ;-)