posts tagged with 'furniture'
spending season
We got new couches today. I was a little sad to see the old ones go—I like things that I'm used to!—but the old ones were pretty broken, and the old ones are very nice, so it's really all for the best. And they fit great, and even give us a little more seating. The only problem with them really is that they still have that new furniture smell, which is not at all pleasant. I was looking forward to showing the couches off to our friends who came over this evening, and planning to mask the smell with the delicious aromas of pizza and yet more rocky road bars... but then our oven wouldn't turn on.
I'm not particularly extravagant, but doing Christmas right takes some money even at the best of times—so it's tough to think of adding another couple thousand dollars to our December bills. Leah is interested in fixing problems, so she's already scoping out the pre-Christmas sales at Lowes. I'm inclined to wait—"maybe it'll start working again!" I say. And in fact, in this instance it did. Once everyone had gone home we were talking about next steps; I turned it on to check one more time and it started right up. Leah cooked some tofu, and the pizza is in there now (a lot of good it'll do anyone at this point, but I didn't want to just throw away all that dough!). But it doesn't inspire confidence, having an oven that only works when it feels like it. I just wonder how much we're able to spend on confidence?
balancing
We're working on a complete remodel of our playroom/schoolroom (it's orange now, you can see here). When I look at old photos and see how long the previous arrangement held sway I'm amazed—that futon and "entertainment center" cabinet, repurposed for board game storage, weren't anything like ideal for how we use the space. The worst part was how little organized storage we had for the kids' school stuff: papers, art supplies, found treasures. Lots of good work has gotten lost and wrinkled. So I'm excited to be building new shelves and desks—desks!—where there will be a place for everything. Including our hard-working boys.
The only problem is, building custom furniture is hard and slow. And since Leah and I are mostly tag-teaming when it comes to balancing work and child-minding, when I'm deeply absorbed in wood-working the children are going unminded. Sometimes that's fine, like when they play outside happily with their friends; other times it's less fine, like when they get deeply absorbed in watching shows on the iPad. And it's always true that the longer I ignore them the rougher things start to feel.
So today, even though I had an out-of-the-ordinary Wednesday at home, I laid the tools aside to hang out a little bit. We built some with legos, read some books, played some ball tag, did some math and some drawing. Took a walk together. It wasn't all focused attention—that isn't good either. I did the regular chores of the household and put in an hour or so of work for my job. But the furniture hardly advanced at all (Lijah and I did work a teeny bit on what will soon be his desk). It's a balance. I guess there's no hurry anyway: even unfinished, the furniture is already getting lots of use.
desk work
how long have you had your couch?
There's a piece making the rounds lately about a terrible couch from West Elm. The notion of the article is, here's this hip $1,200 couch—the "Peggy"—that folks are buying in their late 20s when they want to move up from Craigslist finds or Ikea offerings, but really it's terrible and breaks right away; and that lots of people have had this experience. So I don't really care about that, but there was one thing in the article that really got my attention:
I went into two different West Elm stores and asked patient employees what they thought of the Peggy and if they would recommend it to somebody. ... In both cases, I asked what the expected lifespan is for a West Elm couch like the Peggy. Both store employees told me that between one and three years was normal for a couch with light use.
What?!
We're thinking a lot about our own couches here. The couch and big chair that we bought when we moved into this house are ten years old, and the dog has loved being on them for nine and a half of those years; not to mention the three kids when they came along, the two of us, and countless visitors. There have been many pillow forts. And yet I'm dismayed and disappointed that the covers are getting threadbare and are suffering lots of little holes (and a couple gigantic ones). And our other couch? My parents got that one when I was a baby. Sure, it's been reupholstered once and has a slipcover on it now, but it's still hanging on.
Talking to some other folks about my reaction to the West Elm article, I was gratified to hear that they too thought one to three years was unreasonable—but I think the majority view even among sensible people of my acquaintance is that you shouldn't expect much more than five. I just don't know what to do with that. I was thinking about furniture a while ago (just after we started our epic, house-wide furniture-moving project—still in its middle stages today) and it occurred to me that couches are a pretty new invention, relatively speaking. At least for the common folks, a couple chairs around the stove would be all you could look for by way of relaxing seating. Maybe a rocker. Wooden chairs last longer than five years, I believe.
Generally, I admit I'm too ready to believe that, since I obtained a thing once, I should be free from having to do so again. Shoes, for example, need to be replaced with some regularity, it turns out. Jeans. Socks. But I don't think it's unreasonable of me to expect twenty years out of my couches. The money is bad enough—even worse is the trouble and effort of actually managing the replacement! And what happens to the old couches? Landfill? They're not getting sold on Craigslist, if they're breaking down after one to three years!
Clearly, many people are still making solid, reputable couches, so I shouldn't overreact to this one failure of common sense. But West Elm also sold a lot of Peggys, so. Modern culture is weird.