the saga of my new couch

My living room has a new couch. And a new chaise. And a new bed. My furniture is more than meets the eye!

And it has a great story.

My previous couch was a standard Ikea thing, slipcovered in red. The slipcover was the problem. It refused to stay tucked in, despite the giant metal bar that shoved in between the back and seat. This led to the couch always looking rumpled, and continually needing re-arranging. While Tom didn't seem too bothered by this, it was slowly driving me crazy. So I resolved to get a new couch. A designed couch. A couch that someone could sleep on. A couch from anywhere that isn't Ikea.

I began looking in a fairly lazy way, stopping in to furniture stores I would pass on the way to other places. I resolved to get a new couch as a birthday present to myself, and perhaps convince others to help contribute as presents. Early in my wanderings, and a month and half before my goal date, I stopped into Bo Concept. Nearly everything in the store was well outside my price range. With the exception, surprisingly, of the one couch I was interested in. I determined its price, shipping time (two weeks) and convinced the sales person to allow me to pick-up in store instead of paying for shipping, should I choose to buy. While this made the couch a bit less pricey, it was still more than I really wanted to spend in the most perfect of all possible worlds.

Around this time my father decided to come visit me. Many months earlier, when my sister visited, I'd bought an air mattress off Amazon. She, my mother and several of my friends' have used it since, but I was concerned about him sleeping on the floor with cold air coming in through the windows. However, as it was already too late to order my dream couch, I didn't see much of an alternative.

I had class the day my father was arriving. On the way I passed Bo Concept, and saw a sign advertising a sale on some floor models. They had had the couch I wanted, in the fabric I wanted on the floor the last time I'd been in, so I decided to check in after class to see if perhaps they were selling it. And they were! And it was on sale! And my father was arriving in two hours!

The store is only about three blocks from my apartment. As the couch is too big to fit in Tom's car, I decided to ask if would help my carry it home instead. So, about five minutes before closing and an hour before my father was scheduled to arrive, Tom and I bought and carried the couch, unwrapped, from the store to our apartment. We did stop a couple times, partially from the weight, but also so that we could sit on our couch for a moment in the middle of the sidewalk. We managed to get our old couch to the basement (and later sell it on craigslist) and our new couch up and situated before my father arrived, and took us out for a drink.