Sticks and Stars

I just did my taxes and I think I’m going to buy a new couch and chair with my refund.

There’s not really anything wrong with my current couch and chair except that I hate them. They are ugly and black and the only reason I ever bought them was because I was undecided at IKEA so many years ago when I was on the verge of moving out my boys’ dad’s house and he liked that set best and my brain made the logical connection that if I chose the couch he liked, surely he’d like me best too.

I have other items that resulted from that move out or that resulted from my time involved with him, but the couch and chair are the only items I have left that I hate, that I never wanted and only got because he liked them best. I shed the rest of that stuff years ago, but a couch and a chair are less easy to get rid of, especially when you can’t afford to replace them.

I think it was this time last year that I was also thinking of buying a new couch, although that time I was torn about getting the couch I loved or the couch that would allow me to get laid. Happily, I did not make that shortsighted decision and now have the longitude to see that I spend far more days alone with my couch than I do having sex on my couch and besides, despite it happening entirely without any recognition on my part, my two year old never goes to sleep in my bed anymore and although he’s almost always in my bed by morning, I see now that I may soon have my entire bed to myself — well, except for my cat who’s entirely worse than my children because she insists on touching me the whole damned night and I hate that.

So anyway, I’m thinking of buying a couch (and a chair) and there’s no question that I’ll be buying the ones I love, but there are many, many questions about what colors I should choose. I am so terrible about the color choosing!! This is the couch I love (love!!), which I was surprised to find for $100 less than at the only other store I thought sold this couch during my online search of every furniture-selling store I could think of. And since I’m going to be stuck paying $200 shipping and handling on the damned thing, I figured that I should see if any chairs on the site caught my fancy and I found this one (not with that fabric).

The problem is that the chair only comes in beige and brown. I really wanted the couch to be brown (I felt that was the best choice of the available options — if you scroll down on that page you too can play with the options) but I’m not thrilled with the beige color for the chair (I’m pretty sure it’s the same beige as the “you might also like” couch and chair and whatnot if you look down the page), which only leaves brown. It seems like a bad idea to have a brown couch and a brown chair, both of which will be different shades and drastically different fabrics, so that means that I find a different color for the couch. So what do I choose? Copper? Ink? Sky?? Crimson???

In terms of prominent living room items, I also have three of these bookcases (although they are beech I think, not any of the available options) and this rug and a coffee table (also beech) that’s no longer on the IKEA website. I feel like my couch and chair, being pretty major purchases that I’m going to have to live with for a good while (or beat myself up about for a good while) need to be the exact right choice!

If anyone cares to look and offer advice, I’d surely be glad to hear it!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.