Ever since we painted the barn/man cave the perfect shade of red, I’ve been sputtering about recovering the porch furniture because now… it clashes.
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I recently bought some color coordinated fabric and found a local woman who’s going to do the job.
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Me… sew? Yeah, that’s not happening. So while I was waiting for the seamstress to tell me she was done with prom and wedding dress alterations, I saw this:
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WTH?
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The edges of all the cushions had been shredded!
I ranted, I blamed woodchucks. I cursed, I blamed mice. I sputtered, I blamed chipmunks. But guess what?
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The real culprit..
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Was a bird looking for nesting material.
Mother Nature. She has all manner of ways to drive you crazy.
Last weekend I was reading on the barn porch, enjoying the view of the neighbor’s farm…
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And of our other neighbor walking by….
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When suddenly my view changed.
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Because the husband decided it was time ( after I bugged him for 7… Yes, 7 years. ) to put up a gutter.
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I’ll spare you the four hour nightmare of angles, cutting, bracketing, ladder placement and yes a good bit of cursing as well…
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And get right to the cute stuff.
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A baby woodchuck.
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Make that two baby woodchucks. It’s summer and the little scampers are peaking out from under the barn. Totally adorable. And much more fun to watch than this…
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Especially since the gutter leaked like Hell the first time it rained.
You know, the one our friends gave us that inspired my husband to spend untold thousands in converting his storage barn to a man cave extraordinaire? Well guess what…. the husband has decided the free table isn’t good enough now and has been shopping for a new one.
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Have you ever shopped for a pool table during a global pandemic that forced everyone to stay home? If not, I don’t recommend it. Maybe it’s just Maine, but up here decent pool tables are hard to find. After exhaustive research ( that would be me, you know he wouldn’t take the time ) and a few disappointing viewings from Craig’s List ( ‘oh yes, the table is nearly new and in perfect condition’ they say… standing over a tilted, dented wreck with ripped felt ) we found a store with two ( yes, that’s all ) tables for sale.
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Did I mention it was a very high class place? I deduced this by the dogs playing poker plastic sculpture that took center stage.
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Swanky pool cue holders were available as well.
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Husband tried this table but it got a no vote from me. If we’re going with better… I want better, not seedy pool hall decor.
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This had a little more style, but the wrong color felt. Turquoise may be hot right now but we prefer the old fashioned green.
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The tables can be ordered and customized with any wood finish as well.
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Out the door, delivered and professionally set up for $3,500. Please note this is a far cry from free…. but not as much as the Brunswick or Olhausen brands. Those babies go for $8,000 – $10,000.
Next up in the man cave? Blinds. Which were really fun to shop for considering all the windows are different sizes and thanks to my do it yourself I’m too cheap to pay a carpenter to do the finish work husband.
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The price of custom blinds that would have fit perfectly was ridiculous.
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That window, the smallest ( not to mention crookedest ) was quoted at $310. For one blind! I bought all 6 of these light filtering cellular linen shades for $272. That’s a no brainer.
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Working his way around the room, I followed and tried my hardest to get right in his way.
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At least that’s what he’d tell you. I prefer to think of it as active assistance.
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Which is why I was banished to the other side of the room…. where I sat quietly and read a few blogs.
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But when it came to the final window behind the bar I had to speak up.
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Because after he installed this one, which had the best fit… only 3/8ths of an inch off… he plopped his big bullet back on the sill.
( I know it’s a round and not a bullet, I just say that to get a rise out of my husband. Did it aggravate you as well? Then yay for me. . )
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The problem? The blind won’t go all the way down because the bullet is too fat.
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When I told him this was unacceptable (the main reason for putting up blinds in the first place was to keep the sun from fading the bar) and suggested alternate placements for the big bullet, he forbade me to move it ( as if I could, it’s live and weighs a ton and a half ). When I stressed the need for it’s relocation due to the sun baking on the glass door of the mini fridge causing it to work harder, he told me he’d “think about it”. FFS, what is there to think about? Bullet too big, blind doesn’t close, move big bullet. It isn’t rocket science.
We woke Saturday morning trying to laugh at how horrible the day before had been. It was a definite nightmare, but the sun was shining, the birds were singing and we had new leather chairs to unpack!
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We also had large tracks torn in our lawn from our friend’s giant diesel truck. Of course it had to rain while we were gone the night before, making the ground nice and slippery when he backed up to the porch. 😬
Oh well, out to the barn we went to unwrap the chairs. These chairs… the pretty caramel colored ones we picked out at the store.
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And when we unwrapped the first one?
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It was the wrong color. And had no legs. WTF??? I was livid. After all we went through to get the damn things! I was even pissed off at the tag…
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Real natural? As opposed to what…. fake natural, or real pleather?
I was sputtering and reaching for my phone to call the store and pitch a fit when the husband decided he liked the wrong color and wanted to keep them. Which meant one of two things… he didn’t want to hear me bitch and rant or the thought of waiting another 2 months for replacements and going through the whole warehouse trip again was simply too much.
Either way, he wanted them. And though I wasn’t happy with the much darker color, sometimes I have to remember it’s his man cave and he should be allowed to choose something every now and then. (not that I’ll make a habit of that mind you) But we still had to deal with the no legs issue. We searched the boxes and the wrappings and under the cushions. Nothing. I was getting ready to call the store again and pitch a fit when the husband noticed a string hanging under the second chair.
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There was a zippered compartment under each chair with a box of legs. Clever. But I have to wonder how many other clueless customers search in vain.
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Pieces and parts. And a few hammer shots later…
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I read another tag.
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Our leather chairs are going to have zits and mosquito bites? WTH.
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So there they are. In all their too damned dark glory.
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Husband is happy, and I have to admit they’re very comfortable. But I’m thinking a few strategically placed throw pillows will go a long way to pull it altogether.
We got a phone call telling us the leather chairs we’d ordered for the man cave were ready for pickup. Erring on the side of caution, I suggested we take the husband’s old truck in for a check up before making the long trip. In typical man fashion he thought this was a ridiculous idea, got aggravated with me for impugning the integrity of his baby and told me to schedule the furniture pick up for Friday.
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You knew where this was going…. right? The truck started sputtering and jerking when we hit I-95, an hour after we left home. I suggested we turn around and go back, but no. The husband had the bright idea to get off the highway and ride the back roads down to New Hampshire. This added at least 2 hours to our 2 1/2 trip. When we finally limped in to Nashua… which has awful stop and go traffic and endless traffic lights on the main drag… the truck was stalling every time it idled. I suggested we pull off the road, but no. The husband could literally see the warehouse where our chairs were patiently waiting. He didn’t pull over… so at the final red light? The truck died. Totally and completely died. Smoke pouring out from under the doors died. Yours truly had to jump out and help the husband push it off the busy road into a parking lot. With my bad knee. In case you were wondering…. pushing an 8 foot bed pickup is not on the approved radial meniscus tear exercise list. Ouch! We called AAA and were told due to a tow truck driver shortage it would be a 3 hour wait. Ever sit in a hot truck for 3 hours waiting on a tow? I don’t recommend it. At 4:30 that afternoon…
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The tow truck came, loaded our vehicle on the flat bed and promptly told us due to Covid restrictions we couldn’t ride back to Maine with him … and oh yeah, our coverage was only good for 100 miles. So they’d have to charge us $5 per mile for the overage.
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We paid, the truck went back to Maine…. and there was really only one thing left for us to do.
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I drank. I fumed. I ate southwestern egg rolls. I drank some more.
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There may have been eye rolling. (Who am I kidding, there was definitely eye rolling. )
And then I called a friend. A good friend who jumped in his brand new truck and drove over 2 hours to pick us… and our leather chairs … up. Good thing the warehouse was open until 8:00pm.
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We took him out for dinner and drinks. We filled his giant gas tank. I slipped $100 bill in his center console.
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We arrived home after midnight.
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Not the best time to move furniture, but when do we ever do anything the easy way?
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Did I mention the barn door (the free door my husband got at the dump) is a non standard size? The chairs got stuck 4 times. There may have been cursing, but at that point I was too tired to care.
We rolled in to bed about 1:30am…. and I thought the bad luck was over.
My husband went to breakfast last weekend and met up with his old cronies for the first time in almost a year. They’re a group of men who commandeer a large table at our local restaurant, drink endless cups of coffee and solve the world’s problems. Since he hadn’t seen them in a while, the husband filled them in on our storage barn to man cave transformation. When he got to the part about the pool table, an 85 year old gentleman said he loved to play…. so naturally he received an invitation.
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Husband won the first game and I’m sure he was thinking he should take it easy on the older man.
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Which was about the time this delightful senior citizen began to whip my beloved’s ass.
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85? Maybe so. But he had no problem running the table for the next three games.
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The fifth found my husband in a pickle. Because that sly senior plays a good defensive game as well.
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The husband had stripes.
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Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
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