I have discovered a secret.
A map to a buried treasure? Nope.
The Colonel’s “secret recipe”? Nope.
Where all those lost single socks go? Nope.
The secret I have found is simply this: Furniture shopping can make a completely SANE person go mental.
I know what you’re thinking: “you, Dave….SANE? hahahahaha”. Yeah yeah laugh your head off. But I would submit that a, uh…”more NORMAL person” might just as easily go mental shopping for furniture.
Once we sold our furniture on Craigslist, I figured “heck, that was easy. Now my sweetie can just go buy some furniture and this whole carpet/paint/remodel/rewire/spend spend spend fiasco will be over!”
NOT.
For those of you unfamiliar with my story, I’d suggest you review my original Craigslist (on line classified) ad for the furniture we had to sell. (Click here). My wife came home from work and HATED the newly-installed carpet (!!) Well, the end result was that buying new carpet was just simply not an option. The conversation went something like this:
Wife: “Honey, this carpet is awful. It’s dreadful. It makes the house look dark! Like a 1970’s home!”
Me: “…but you….picked the color.”
Wife: “I KNOW I picked out the color, but…it looks….different installed.”
Me: “Yeah, like alot more EXPENSIVE now that it’s installed. Do you realize we’ll have to (Editor’s note: pay attention here, dear readers!) spend $2,500.00 to replace this carpet and make it match our furniture, paint, and everything else? That’s just OUT OF THE QUESTION! Now honey, there has to be another way to make you happy, my little hubcap….”.
Wife: “Yes. Another way. (Editor’s note: Dave did not notice the new glean in her eye, and the 200 watt light bulb that suddenly appeared over her head, glaring in his face, with a big ol’ “DING” sound….dumb dumb Dave!) Yes, there IS another way!”
Thus started our what I call the “Unanticipated Total Remodel Phase I”. This included new paint, new wool rug, moving the entertainment center (read: re-wiring the walls/baseboards YET AGAIN) and selling of the “old and out of date” (and yes, for you “FLORAL HATER”:) FLORAL furniture. Net income: $350 for the furniture. Expense: $500 for paint, supplies, speaker wire, etc. Net total: $150 out of pocket. I didn’t even see it coming. (Hello? Dave? Anyone home?) As I surveyed the (now empty) living room with the (freshly laid) wool rug with all of it’s “bright, new colors” and the (repainted) walls, I knew I was in DEEP DOO-DOO.
Then came what I call the “Unanticipated Total Remodel Phase II”. This is where hubby is GONNA PAY, and not only using his WALLET. This is where the “fun” really begins. My wife became a female “Martha Stewart Magellan”, in search of:
(Big drum sounds, big band, lots of fanfare!) THE PERFECT FURNITURE!!
(NOW imagine sounds of clarinets squeaking, violin strings breaking, and piano keys playing the wrong note, all “peetering out” to a dreadful….silence.)
See, this is a demonstration of the way God, in his infinite humor, intentionally wired men and women differently. If I was looking for furniture, here’s how it would go:
Dave (walking into ding ding ding! >>>shameless plug…well, maybe not…read on<<<< Rooms-to-Go) : Excuse me, ma’am, are you a sales lady at this fine establishment?”
Saleslady: “Why yes. Yes I am.”
Dave: “I need…a ROOM.”
Saleslady: “Okay…what KIND of room?”
Dave: “Well, a living room. Like….(looking around)…that one, there! (pointing to living room display located front-and-center in the showroom)”
Saleslady: “Well, that’s a fine choice. You get this 100% genuine artificial particle-board framed FLORAL couch, the matching love seat, these Chinese-made end and coffee tables with the screw-on legs, and these two very plain and ugly nondescript lamps for $699.00 BUT you make no payments, with no accruing interest until the year 2030!”
Dave: “I’ll take it”.
See? Isn’t that easy? I’d have it delivered the next day and sit down and enjoy my “new” living room situation on my “butt ugly” carpet. Can life get any better? Again, I submit that it CANNOT.
But alas, Dave’s fantasy ends here. Instead, I have been subjected to furniture-shopping HELL. You see, I have learned that one cannot simply go into a store and buy something off the show room floor! How totally YESTERDAY. No, we have to hunt, search, hunt some more, search some more, spend endless hours cruising the internet, until we find:
(Big drum sounds, big band, lots of fanfare!) THE PERFECT FURNITURE!!
(NOW AGAIN imagine sounds of clarinets squeaking, violin strings breaking, and piano keys playing the wrong note, all “peetering out” to a dreadful….silence.)
Once we “find” the perfect furniture, we then have to make contact with some salespeople in the Carolinas, “America’s Furniture Capital of the Known Universe”, I am told. I make contact with “Jay”, who I have to say is one very cool and knowledgeable furniture sales guy. I really like him. Too bad we’re going to drive him “mental” as well. Heck, we’ll go for that ride together…..
I am tasked with the job of simply “calling Jay” and asking him for prices on 538 different chairs, sofas, ottomans and combinations thereof. The first conversation went like this:
Dave: “Okay Jay, let me start with number 1. The Bernhardt “Crawford” couch, Item B3887″
Jay: “Okay, got it. Is that fabric or leather?”
Dave (Blank stare at the phone): “Uh, I don’t know. She didn’t say”.
Jay: “Okay, well, how about if I quote you a price using a “G Fabric” and a “Number 4″ leather?”
Dave (Blank stare at the phone): “A wha? G Fabric? What’s that?”
Jay: “Well, Dave, in order to ORDER furniture, I will need to know the grade of fabric in order to price this piece. Same with the leather. See, Bernhardt uses a scale from “B” through “M”. Their leather, however, goes from grade 1 through 5.”
Dave: “Uh, okay. Let’s do “G”. “G” stands for “Good”, and I like number 4, cuz that’s…a…number I like.”
Jay: “Okay, well I will work that price. What’s next?”
Dave: “The Lexington Tommy Bahama Maya Chair number 01-1743-11-01”
Jay: “Fabric or leather?”
Dave: “Uh, okay. Let’s do “G”. “G” stands for “Good”, and I like number 4, cuz that’s…a…number I like.”
Jay: “Well, actually Dave, Lexington uses a “9 to 17” scale for fabric and a “M through T” scale for leather. What would you like?”
Dave: (Blank Stare into phone).
So it went. E-mail and phone call after e-mail and phone call. Piece after piece after piece. I now envision a full-headed “Jay” now doing the “comb-over thing” trying to cover the baldness resulting from our making him pull his own hair out.
I’ve now realized that ordering a new couch and two (no, THREE, I am told) chairs will EASILY run me over $4,000.00 including shipping.
$150 out of pocket + $4,000.00 soon-to-be out of pocket = Dave is an idiot for not buying new carpet. Dang, she IS GOOD.
Tomorrow, I get to accompany my (lovely and deserving) wife to a furniture store. We get to play:
“I am going to pretend to buy furniture from you but in reality we just want to see your fabric samples so that we can buy your really overpriced furniture from that “much more REASONABLE place” in the Carolinas” game.
The salespeople will hover over our shoulder, wondering why we’re madly writing numbers down, all the while they are playing the “Those scumbags are pretending to be interested in our furniture but in reality they are just trying to get information from us so that they can go to the Carolinas and buy the same furniture for cheaper!” game.
The gamesmanship will continue. I’ll be asked questions like:
Wife: “Honey, do you like SOLID colors or something with a pattern?”
Dave: “Uh….” (more blank stares)
Wife: “If we do two chairs in leather, I think we need to have the couch totally leather-free, wouldn’t you agree?”
Dave: “Hungry. Me hungry.”
Wife: “Yeah, good point. We don’t want to have fabric that’s easily stained from food spills. I’m leaning more toward a polyester blend. Maybe something with some silk. No, silk is expensive to clean. I wonder what Laura has on that couch of hers? It still looks so new. Have you sat on that couch? Do you like hard cushions, or maybe softer ones? Pillow loose-back couches or couches with cushions?”
Dave: “mommy?” (curling up in fetal position).
Yes, that’s it. I’m on the verge of going….MENTAL.
Hopefully, she’ll buy something SOFT, like the padded walls in my “new room”.
Happy Shopping honey. You’re still worth it.
