Five years on, Edwards has not only furnished her South Kensington flat with everything from door handles to fitted wardrobes bought from our European neighbors, but has set up a company, Europe by Net, to source designer goods for other consumers fed up with hefty UK price tags.

'One time, when I was trying to buy bathroom fittings, I was on the phone to two companies at the same time, one in England and one in Italy, comparing prices. In the end I bought them in Italy and even with the shipping they were a third of the price they would have cost here,' she says, relishing the absurdity of the situation.

The first room Edwards got to work on when she and her husband moved into the flat was the kitchen. The two pokey little rooms that existed before were knocked through, ending the lonely separation of cook from dining room, and then Edwards started hunting for an affordable kitchen, which is where the marble came in.

With this saving in hand, she set about finding a family-run Italian company to build the traditional units of dark wood with brass fittings that she was looking for. And her bargain hunting paid off: the final bill for the whole kitchen, including the bespoke, solid walnut units, marble and installation came in at £8,000, a not-to-be-sniffed-at £20,000 saving on the original UK quote. And what's more, she says, there were no hitches: 'All the shipping, everything, was organised by fax. There were 72 boxes sent over, and not a screw missing.'

There's quite a contrast between the kitchen and the rest of the flat, as Edwards's tastes have changed a lot over the past five years. 'As we got the website going, I kept seeing all these one-offs and thinking, "I have to have it."' Consequently, the rest of the flat is very minimal and filled with choice pieces of modern, designer furniture: the large oak-floored living room has an impressive Philippe Starck Caadre mirror (pictured below right) and a bulbous, sculptural red armchair by Gaetano Pesce for B&B Italia called Up 5 (pictured below left) , which comes with Up 6- a round footstool which is attached to the chair by an elasticated cord. 'My children love it,' says Edwards. 'They use it as a climbing frame.'

The living room also has two large armchairs (Astoria from Pierantonio Bonacina) which look deceptively uncomfortable, the angular wooden frame in fact softened by a small supportive roll cushion and strung with leather strips, which mould themselves around you.

The spartan living room, offset by heaps of toys tucked into the corners, is not entirely by design - Edwards has put her flat slightly on hold since the business took off. The plus side to what she calls her 'piecemeal approach' to the interior, however, is that having shopped around for the website, she knows exactly what she wants; her latest must-have being an Interlübke wall unit, lit up from inside by an ever-changing light show - though at £9,000 she's not holding her breath.

Upstairs is also fairly bare, and Europe by Net's influence can be seen in each room, with 'Zoe', a striking red, yellow and blue story-telling chair (Casamania by Frezza) in one of the children's bedrooms and a Zanotta glass-topped side table and a fragile Wo-tum-bu lamp by paper-folding expert Ingo Maurer in the other.

'My tastes have definitely cfahanged since I started the company,' says Edwards, casting a critical eye around the flat. 'I was brought up surrounded by Seventies Danish "modern" furniture - all orange and teak. Now I'm exposed to beautiful things every day and if I had limitless money I'd change my furniture all the time, so as not to get bored of anything.'