These deals can be for as much as 125 per cent of a property's value and can help first-time buyers to pay the stamp duty or furnish a home.

The eventual goal of the project was to furnish the home circa 1820s and open it as a house museum to the public.

Rent-to-own companies argue that without their service, many customers would not be able to furnish their homes and have basics such as washing machines.

Industry advocates argue they allow people to furnish their homes smartly without recourse to actual loan sharks.

Last night they voted to carry on furnishing their homes at your expense.

No one has yet persuaded us that e-books do furnish a room.

Books do more than furnish a room: they are our intellectual companions.

Books do furnish a room, but they can also overwhelm it, towering high on their library shelves, shadowing the lives of the people below.

Books furnish a room, and all that.

Books furnish a room with feelings.

A financial failure, its main client was a timber merchant who paid them in timber to furnish their office.

He even borrowed items from his wife's stockpile of heirlooms to partially furnish his office.

The bill for furnishing the offices, which will accommodate 900 staff, came to 2.33m, or almost 2,600 per employee.

He has said that he trusts his wife utterly in matters of interior decoration, allowing her to furnish his offices, yachts, planes and homes.

In the past decade and a half they have furnished the offices of prime minister, chancellor and - yes - foreign secretary.

This has unintentionally proved the bane of luthiers, many of whom cherish stocks of materials from previous generations and are thus unable to furnish proof of origin.

Once accepted, a candidate must furnish proof of age.

Even that was dependent on my furnishing proof of address in the form of utility statements and so on.

She defended her husband in court, drafting memoirs, writing letters and furnishing proofs of his innocence.