New is pricey, so she’s trying to love old pieces that are ‘hate crime to good taste’
I’ve been living with furniture I despise for 20-plus years, and now I’m actively trying to convince myself to fall in love with it.
My reasoning for this is exceedingly simple: money. Have you priced new furniture lately? It’s expensive and the quality can be questionable..
The furniture I’m currently hating on is my bed frame, an armoire and a couch. The backstory is fairly simple. It begins and ends with my husband’s bad taste.
OK, that was harsh. The more accurate assessment would be the man was preyed upon by a sales associate with a questionable design ethos.
This furniture was purchased decades ago by my husband. He had started a new job in Nevada. We also had just bought a house there, but the kids and I hadn’t moved yet.
This meant the new house, alas, didn’t have any furniture, so off my husband went on his own and purchased bedroom furniture. I’m still confused by this. My husband was still young-ish and his back could have most certainly survived sleeping on an air mattress for two weeks until the kids and I arrived.
But no, the man went rouge and just walked into a furniture store and committed a hate crime to good taste.
The bed he purchased is a California King monstrosity of dark wood. The armoire would be at home in a haunted house and the couch looks like it might have been part of the set design on “The Brady Bunch.”
The good news is all of the furniture is of exceptional quality. That’s also the bad news. Every single piece is still in pristine condition, so I can’t use the “it’s worn out so it needs to be replaced” excuse.
Finally, though, I decided I had suffered enough and it didn’t matter if the furniture still looked brand new. It was time for me to go shopping.
This experience led to me stunned sobbing. To replace the hideous furniture with furniture of the same quality was going to cost three times what I paid for my first new car.
Granted, my first car was a 1983 Nissan Sentra, but still: A 2024 couch shouldn’t cost more than a car.
I know I probably sound naive, but I hadn’t bought furniture — with the exception of IKEA and Home Goods stuff for my children’s post-college apartments — in a long time. So, walking into a fancy furniture store was a WTH? moment.
Another shocking discovery was the fact that furniture made from solid wood is going, going, gone. Even some of the jaw-dropping expensive furniture had a DNA of veneers, plywood, laminated board and chipboard, with maybe some hardwood thrown in for giggles.
My takeaway from all of this, besides getting emotional and desperately needing the healing powers of a Diet Coke, was that maybe this is was a sign. Perhaps I just need to learn to love those three pieces of ugly, yet exceedingly well-made furniture.
When I told my kids this momentous decision they, to put it bluntly, were horrified. My daughter said if my husband and I die still owning that furniture it’s a sign that we never loved them.
My son was less poetic. He said, “One word. Bonfire.”
They could be right but I’m going to give love a chance. At least for now.
Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs @snarkynsuburbs, on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and on TikTok @snarkyinthesuburbs and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.
