Sunday, June 23, 2019

When a chair is a purse

Over the years in a relationship, you form a shorthand, like since shopping for the perfect purse is arduous and time-consuming, anything else that is also those two things my wife and I now refer to as a purse. We went shopping for a a new arm chair Sunday. An arm chair is a purse. 

A chair is a chair, you say. How hard can it be? Well, let me tell you—some swivel. You are either into that or not. In the furniture store it looks like a normal arm chair. You sit down to test it, and you are now facing a different wall. Into it? No. I like a chair that narrows my options, not one that expands them.

We have an old chair whose upholstery is worn out and shredded by a cat we haven't had for a dozen years. It's nice and wide. "Butt and dog wide," as I say, with room for Skipper and me both to rest. But it looks horrendous. 

We went to IKEA, and their stuff is certainly affordable, but they should really stick to things people have to assemble. IKEA selling things which are ready to use as soon as you get them home is an overstep, on a par with that new Orange-Vanilla Coke. 

My wife suggested we go to the expensive furniture store in our town, and I said the chairs over there are $1000, which is a lot, and she said "Not if you prorate it over the life of your butt."

That quote works on so many levels. 

So we went to the nice furniture store, where we had gotten a large Craftsman style entertainment unit 20 years ago. (I like to keep a store guessing about my loyalty.)

They had gorgeous Stickley chairs, leather, the kind with broad wooden arm rests; arms rests which if sold by themselves would cost more than your best suit. If I had a man cave, and a spare $5000, I could see myself in a chair like that. That's real craftsmanship, the kind you don't see any more because you don't make enough.

We were looking for a plush chair with rounded arms. English arms, they are apparently called, and we found a nice one upstairs in the fancy store. The fabric was a dark boring solid, but they had 15 feet of wall space with long hanging fabric samples, which resembled a massive closet for a guy who only ever wears one pant leg. 

The fabric the floor model had was very soft, and we just could not find a different fabric we liked and thought would work with our wine-colored couch. We asked the saleswoman if we could buy the floor model, which had been marked down because its fabric was discontinued, probably because it was dark and boring. She said sure. 

I asked her if there was a discount since it was a floor model. She actually freaking laughed out loud. I thought since a floor model undergoes the wear and tear of multiple butts, that was worth a break on the price. Years ago I bought a patio table/chair combo floor model at OSH, and the manager agreed to knock 10% off, and I was glad I had the audacity to ask. 

The nice furniture store, in business now for more than 80 years, is not OSH. 

We arranged to have the floor model delivered in a week or so. It will fit me and the dog, and is the last arm chair I ever expect to buy in this lifetime. Let the prorating begin.