A cloudy, 10 degree morning. Snow in the yard has solidified into ice 5 inches deep, cumulative, from these weeks of sleet, ice and snow. The smaller critters in the back yard walk on top...the deer still sink in. Plenty of tracks around the edge of the woods and the dump out back.
Went into the city to Value City Furniture for their President's day sale yesterday, looking for bedroom furniture. This is something I managed to put off for 3 and a half years...as I've made do with a vintage 1950's set mom and dad bought when they got married. All mirrors and not enough storage. Very Heavy.
Walking in I was immediately overwhelmed by the size of everything. Big puffy furniture.... bloated and oversized couches and chairs big enough for 350 pound people. Huge sleigh beds.... Ass high off the
floor just to get onto them. Large pictures of Zebras and crazy patterned modern art for the walls. I just stared with mouth open. Crazy looking chairs shaped like giant shoes.
Nothing there for me.
Then went up the highway to Ashley Furniture. Another huge place with BIGGER huge furniture.... Most of it very dark wood.... or Black laquer and super gaudy. Stuff with mirrors built in..... or wild 1970s patterns and oddly juxtaposed colors. Dining room sets you could put in an old mansion. The kind with a dinosaur under the staircase...
Our sales woman was named "Cat." She had big Donny Iris type glasses and short razor cut hair and was about 60. She had wonderful perfume. And perfectly manicured nail tips.
I asked about an oak bedroom set. Something Simple. And a headboard to fit a "full" size mattress. She got this strange look and said we have nothing like that here. Oh...wait.... maybe in the back.....so we walked. Then walked more, and there really WAS nothing like that there.
She said "no one" has full-sized beds anymore. Just queen sized.... or King. Was I interested in a children's bed? You want oak? We really don't have anything with "light" colored wood. Did you want White?
No.
My head hurt and I was not doing well at this point, a bit anxious. So we left.
On the way home, the brother in law said let's stop at the Furniture Barn. (It's a place in the very small town where he lives. Just a half mile from his house. The town has one stop light and it sometimes just blinks.)
We walked in the building, which at one time probably was a barn. The "office" is filled with old pictures of the "original" store.... with vintage cars from the 1950's out front....and a framed roster of Civil war veterans with some names "from the family" hanging on the wall. It is a humble place with a can of wasp spray on the window......and the clutter of years of business.
I asked the old man for an oak bedroom suite. He said we'd have to "go upstairs." So we did.
And way at the back in the corner was a perfect oak chest, small oak dresser, simple oak framed mirror, oak side table and a simple headboard, that fits both Full and Queen. And that was all he had in oak. It is made in the USA, he added.
And I bought it. In 10 minutes. Free Delivery. And he knows where I live. Because he remembered selling me a couch 16 years ago.
I told him I'd be back soon for a new couch.
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