Man, I can’t believe it took me a full week to talk about the new furniture that Jay and I got last weekend! But I have today off for Martin Luther King’s Day (the first time I’ve ever had off from work for this holiday), so I’m going to try to catch up on some posts I’ve started and not finished. I figured I’d start with an easy one.
So back in mid-December, the couch that I bought back in 2007 when I lived in Astoria with Amanda started to show signs of its age and cheap Ikea-ness. Everyone, including Amanda, pretty much hated this couch by the time we moved out, but I didn’t. So, I took it back to my parents’ house and stored it away in their basement and then brought it to Raleigh when I moved here at the end of February 2009. Ever since we got married, Jay has been complaining about wanting a new couch. We ended up buying a replacement cover for it in September and all was quiet on the “I want a new couch, I hate this couch” front. Cut to December, when we heard a crack. It was right before we were going to have Jay’s family over for a Christmas dinner. Uh oh, right? A wood support beam had cracked. You could still sit on it, so we let it go for the time being. One night, Jay decided to try to reinforce the beam to get more use out of the couch. That…didn’t go as well as planned. It wasn’t Jay’s fault; the wood was just crappy. It ended up splitting a little bit more. It got to the point where we both could sit on it, but we didn’t exactly feel safe with both of us sitting on it.
Then, late last week, it started to visibly sink in and when you sat on the couch, you felt like you were sinking down towards the floor. Observe in pictures:
You can see where it dips down where I’m laying on it. Excuse my dirty appearance, we took the picture right when I had gotten home from Pilates class, so I was a little unkempt, haha.
So on Friday, January 11, there was a Groupon for couches. No, we didn’t get the Groupon, but we both saw the offer and texted each other at the same time about how we needed to do something about the couch situation. I had mentioned to my boss that we needed to go couch shopping and she recommended that we check out a place called Home Comfort Outlet. My boss is always a fantastic gem of information on stuff like this, so I told Jay about it and we agreed to check it out after work. When we got there, it looked like a bit of a dumpy place from the outside and Jay was showing signs of skepticism. It was raining and freezing cold outside and the place was pretty empty. Luckily, we were pleasantly surprised once we started looking around – at both the products and the prices. Essentially, this is an outlet store where other furniture stores in the area must send any pieces that are leftover after they are replaced by newer models or no longer on the showroom floor. There are more than just sofas; Home Comfort Outlet also has bed frames, dressers, tables, etc. After some looking around, we settled on a sofa/love seat combo that was very well-priced. I believe this set comes from Ashley Furniture.
Jay was pushing for us to get the set because it means that we’ll have to get rid of the Papasan chair, which I love so much, but he has been on a campaign to get rid of it for a while now. As sad as I am to see the Papasan go, it will be nice to have more seating when we have people over and it will be nice to each be able to sprawl out on our own couch when we’re watching TV. We talked it over that night and I was a little bit hesitant because buying new furniture is expensive and I’d had the old Ikea couch for almost 6 years. I’m sentimental and get attached to things. I was talking to my grandma about it the following day and she told me to get over myself and get the damn new couch. I believe her words were, “Remember when you were little and mommy said ‘Say bye bye to the wee wee’ as you flushed it down the toilet? Well, say bye bye to the broken couch and get yourself a new, better one.” She made me laugh so hard and she’s always trying to get me to understand the value of the saying “Out with the old, in with the new,” that I told Jay that we had to get the couches that day while I still had my conviction.
We got there, looked around one last time and decided to go for it. As you may know, Jay is a big fan of haggling for prices. He tried to haggle with them to either lower the price by a small amount (the amount that the tax would be) or throw in free shipping (it was $100). They basically told us to GFY on both accounts, so we decided that we were going to try to transport the new furniture ourselves. The love seat was actually out of stock at the moment, so we rented a U-Haul for a few hours to transport the bigger couch. Oh, goodness, is it nerve-wracking to drive even a U-Haul van for 20 minutes, but Jay did it like a pro:
We had asked Clif to see if he would meet us at our apartment to help carry the couch in, but we got back a half hour before he said he could get there, so we decided to do it ourselves. Let me tell you how much of a production number that ordeal was. I only dropped it on the stairs once and my arms hurt for the next 6 days, but it was worth it. Not only did we save about $70, but we felt really accomplished that we had managed to do it ourselves. Here’s the couch in place of the old one. I took it while we were waiting for Clif to arrive to help Jay take the old couch away. The old couch was positioned where the new loveseat will go.
But, our furniture adventure story doesn’t end there. Since early the summer, Jay has been trying to convince me to get a cabinet for our dining room area. We just don’t have enough space for a lot of things we got as wedding gifts and things like the crock pot or the Pyrex were being stored under my desk and we’d have to dig around to get them out when we needed to use them. We also have more glasses than can fit in our kitchen cabinets, so that kind of stuff was being stored on the washer and dryer. While I saw his point, it was something that I felt we could make do without spending the extra money on it. I was so pumped up when I saw how awesome the new couch looked that when Clif arrived, I told Jay that we needed to go to Target and see about a cabinet purchase. We got there and I was dismayed to learn that they didn’t have the cabinet we wanted in that espresso/cherry wood color. I was learning towards just sucking it up and getting it in black, but after about 10 minutes, Jay & Clif convinced me to go bold and go red.
I’m SO glad we got it. It looks great and we finally have enough room to fit everything in the kitchen, so nothing is in the bedroom or laundry area. I’m thrilled that we went furniture crazy for the weekend and I haven’t even freaked out about how much it all was yet, lol.
A side note to the story is that because we need a sleeper sofa for when we have out-of-town guests, I’m probably going to get this pull-out for Jay for his birthday to put in the Man Cave. It’s very comfortable and I’ve always wanted a couch where I can lay both ways on it.
Well, that’s all folks. If you’ve made it down this far, I thank you very much. Have a great week!
