September 16, 2010: Out With the Old, In With the New

It was time. We've lived with the blue sofa and love seat for over twenty years, and it refuses to die. It just got to the point where we were sick and tired of it, so we went furniture shopping.

Do you know that everything in the furniture stores is brown? I did see one bright paprika colored sofa, but that was just too much of a system shock. Besides, I don't have paprika colored dogs, and the two I do have do shed. So I had no choice, I went brown. I did find a small, comfortable, sage green recliner (ahhhhh.....finally, a chair that fits my weary bones!). We had a perfectly good and practically new sage green recliner in the family room, so we brought it into the living room last night and I tested it out. It was so big, I had to practically lie flat on my back for my feet to touch the floor! It took all my strength to recline it, and then I couldn't get it back upright. I'm really not that weak! My daughter, Amy, dropped in, and I had her try it. She got stuck in the horizontal position, too. Mr. Granny was not a happy camper when I informed him the giant recliner was just not acceptable. He was especially grouchy about having to move it back to its original location.

Mr. Granny and I searched through two furniture stores yesterday, and I think I sat on about a hundred couches and reclined in a dozen or more chairs. I'm not a short person, around 5' 5", but most of the sofas were so deep I felt like Edith Ann, sitting in her giant chair. Besides, most of them had loose pillow backs. Did I ever tell you that my boy dog, Otto, has an insatiable appetite for loose pillows? We can't leave him alone in the house, or he consumes them. He doesn't just rip into them, he eats them. We've learned to shut all loose sofa pillows in the closet when we leave the house. Of course, he hasn't eaten a pillow since he was about a year old, but I hate to take chances.

By the time I drove into the parking lot at the third furniture store, Mr. Granny was refusing to leave the car. I really don't know why I even took the man, he's not the best shopper. To him, a chair is a chair, a sofa is a sofa, and he'd just buy the first one he saw. He actually wanted to buy a gray one, and I have beige carpeting!

I wasn't even going to stop at the fourth furniture store. They were having a sale, but the previous tenants of that building sold cheap furniture, and I hadn't bothered to even go through their doors in years, expecting the new owners to be selling the same shoddy wares. But I was in the neighborhood, and I had yet to see "IT". "IT" being something I could live with the rest of my life, because hopefully it will be the last living room set I'll ever have to buy. So, leaving Mr. Granny behind again, I entered the fourth, and thankfully final, furniture store.

I was greeted by a pleasant young salesman, the first one of the day who actually acted as though he wanted to be of help. I told him I would know if I saw "IT", and he respectfully backed off and let me browse. About the third row in, I saw "IT". The salesman sensed immediately that it was time to come in for the kill sale. He deftly showed me the quality workmanship, explained that the cushions were puffy because they were hand stuffed down filled, and pointed out the fact that the set was marked down over $300 from its regular price. When I mentioned I might be interested in a small recliner, he didn't stupidly ask "what size would that be?" like the salesman at a previously visited store (did he really expect me to have chair measurements in my head?), he picked up one of the loose pillows from the sofa and went directly to a small, sage green recliner. One that fit my butt like a glove. One that let my feet touch the floor so I could gently rock. One that reclined so comfortably it almost made me want to shut my eyes and go to sleep. One that went back into the upright position without throwing out my back. Thank you Charlie, from Thomas Furniture. It's not often one finds a competent, caring salesperson these days.

I just wish I'd looked at their website before I spent $1500 at their store. There's a coupon for 10% off the purchase! Too late now :-(


So, anyway, out with the old......




And in with the new......




I still have a few accessories to change. So far I've purchased a few candles and reclaimed the large, brown, pottery ashtray from the boys' smoking area on the patio. I clustered three candles in the ashtray and surrounded them with small colored stones. I bought a small vase of dried grasses for the old sewing machine, and next to it, I set the green leaf shaped dish I'd bought when the dollar store sold out last summer.


The blue floral entry rug was replaced with this more colorful one, which really picks up the colors of the brown sofa and love seat, the lighter shade of the oak furniture, the sage green recliner, and the brick on the fireplace. Eventually, I'll recover the sofa pillows in a fabric with these darker and brighter colors.

Now, please excuse me while I fall asleep in my new recliner.