Tag Archives: furniture shopping

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It’s always the last place you look.

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If you remember, I’ve been fruitlessly shopping for coffee and end tables. Ever since we got the new living room furniture I’ve been looking but not finding. Just when I was about to give up and resign myself to living with the old beaten up pieces…Amazon to the rescue.

I never thought about looking there for decent furniture. Figured it would all be pressboard and veneered crap. But when you’re desperate? You take a chance.

I started with the smallest end table.

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And it wasn’t half bad.

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Simple to assemble and made from surprisingly solid wood. Since I had good luck with that, I ordered the second slightly larger end table.

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Mission style, which blends nicely with the new dining room.

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With a drawer and shelf in surprisingly nice hard solid wood.

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I’m so tickled with the quality and remarkably low price, I’m going to order the third and largest piece for in front of the couch.

I’m thrilled.

My husband? Not so much…

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Since he’s the one who has to put them all together.

😉

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Here we go again….

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New dining room furniture? Check.

New living room furniture? A painful process, but.. check.

Now?

The den needs an update.

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The furniture in there is… I’m ashamed to admit, 35 years old. ( What can I say, we’re frugal New Englanders. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it) And while this ugly old set ain’t broke, it’s definitely seen better days. Decades of cats have split and torn the fabric and the cushions are just plum worn out.

It was time to go furniture shopping.

Again.

I know my husband was looking forward to it.

Not!

The den is the only room in our house that has a wallpaper border above the chair rail moulding.

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It’s shore birds with shells and wildflowers in a soothing blue and beige tone. I thought about ripping it off to have a clean color slate , but I have fond memories of my late mother helping me put it up. She always called our den “the blue room” and I simply couldn’t bring myself to erase that… so blue was on the menu.

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Here’s my husband, once again looking thrilled to be part of the process.

But I had a surprise for him. Since we were pleased with the quality of the Flexsteel we purchased for the living room and overjoyed with the low price and great service we received from the little family run store in Waterville … it was a one stop shopping trip.

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I came home with blue samples.

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And found a perfect compliment to the wallpaper.

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This is the couch.

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The chair.

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And the ottoman.

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Chair and ottoman will be done in the pattern. Couch in the blue (which is a bit lighter in person) with coordinating patterned pillows.

Easy peasy.

My husband was amazed. Not to mention relieved.

Delivery in 6-8 weeks.

😊

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It pays to shop around.

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My husband couldn’t understand why I wanted to visit sooo many different furniture stores. We’d picked out the style of couches….

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And the matching chair and ottoman.

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I’d even decided on the fabrics.

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But the price quotes were all over the place.

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That’s a considerable difference, and surprising because the highest quote came from the large chain store that constantly crows about its low prices.

And just when my (very patient) husband was crying uncle and telling me to “buy something already!”….

I found an even lower price for the exact same thing.

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From $7,775 to $5,798.

A savings of $1,977.

Yay me.

Less money and the satisfaction of supporting a small business that’s been in the same family for over 100 years.

That’s what I call a win win.

Free delivery in 6-8 weeks.

😊

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Giving him a little taste of the frustration.

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My husband rolled his eyes and scoffed at the idea of me not being able to choose a fabric for the sofa he liked among a hundred and fifty choices so I decided to let him experience the joy of fabric selection first hand.

Since we needed to find a different brand of furniture, shopping began anew.

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Can you tell how thrilled he was?

He didn’t mind that couch, but vetoed the square arms.

The salesperson said it could be ordered in a rolled arm style….

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And we were off.

Standing in front of that brand’s wall of fabric, I started pulling patterns.

The following comments are his.

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Too swirly.

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Too wavy.

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Too blotchy.

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Too hippie dippie.

45 minutes later, he started wandering around and picked these.

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Too bad they belonged to a brand that didn’t sell a couch he liked.

The designer in residence took up our cause at that point and pulled this.

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The husband?

He said it looked like television static.

Almost an hour and a half in, he was done…. and pointed at this.

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“That one.

Get that one.”

I thought it an odd choice, but the salesman plugged it into the creation app and the husband was so sick of the process he approved.

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I argued that it would be too light a pattern for an ottoman not to mention our white walls and opted to take the swatch home.

The husband? He opted for a bar because the whole thing had driven him to drink.

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Cranberry gin fizz for me.

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Two beers and a disappointing French onion soup for him.

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My crab cakes with spicy remoulade were wonderful.

Fortified with lunch and alcohol… we kept shopping.

😉

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It’s the Amish for the win…

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Though I really wanted to purchase living room furniture first, we seem to have put that on hold (due to ugly ass fabrics) and moved on to the dining room.

This is what my husband fell in love with.

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An extremely high quality, Amish made, Mission style table and chairs made of elm and maple. He surprised me by liking the black contrast but was so impressed with the quality he may not have even noticed.

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A feature he really liked? The leaves store in the table itself.

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He also like the table base which has an odd… shelf? Place for tablecloths? I don’t know what it is but I can totally see Lord Dudley Mountcatten claiming it for his own.

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This is the arts and crafts style hutch we also purchased, though it will be in the darker stain like the table and have glass sides on the top cabinet.

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It’s unusual to see my husband so thrilled with furniture… but the man couldn’t stop rubbing his hands all over this so I guess it’s worth the jaw dropping price.

Delivery in 12 weeks.

😊

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Is a little color too much to ask?

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Remember how thrilled I was that my husband found a living room set he liked?

Well, I went back to the store to pick out the fabric before ordering, and sadly …. I wasn’t thrilled for long.

Oh, they had plenty of decent solids, but when it came time to choose a pattern for the coordinating pillows, chair and ottoman I was seriously underwhelmed.

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They were ugly.

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They were colorless.

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And I didn’t want a single one of them in our house.

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WTH?

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These were the only two out of what seemed like hundreds that even came close…

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But neither of them gave me the warm fuzzy I need.

Matter of fact… the only real color in the entire store was this pillow of what looked like grass.

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Lazy Boy doesn’t allow fabric substitutions so I can’t buy material elsewhere and bypass their awful selection.

This is not good news.

We finally found the furniture… but we hate the fabrics.

Damn it. The search continues….

😩

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