The Long, Bumpy Road to Love(seat)

NOVEMBER, 2016

I'm convinced that my only option for comfortable seating in my studio apartment is a couple of arm chairs. I spend a few weeks searching for suitable options that meet the necessary criteria: stylish, small, and comfortable. Every time I find something I like, I realize it's either huge or will likely be no more suited for movie-watching than my woven wooden chairs, and as I'm complaining on the phone to my mom she tells me over and over again to "just get a sofa already."

In my attempt to prove her wrong, to show that there's no way a sofa would fit, I break out the measuring tape and discover...well, actually, maybe it would.

The next search begins. The two sofas I've had my eye on in the past are nixed due to size or cost, and that's when I find it: the perfect solution.

Don't let the orange sway you — it comes in the perfect feather gray, as well, which is exactly what I was looking for. Neutral, modern lines, and most importantly: 68 inches wide. Long enough to comfortably seat two people who aren't looking to make out with each other, short enough to still allow the fridge door to open and close unimpeded. Yessssss. I visit my local West Elm several times just to sit on it and inspect it from every possible angle. I ask if the legs come off. I measure it in person to make sure the dimensions online are 100% accurate. I sit on it again until I'm finally convinced. This is the one.

Being the cheapskate that I am, I look up when the next major sale will take place (Black Friday) and then strategically open a West Elm credit card so I can earn store credit for the large purchase. Even better: I learn that you get a $50 bonus just for signing up when you make a qualifying purchase, and a $25 bonus on your birthday.

I do the math, and unfortunately, I won't get the bonuses in time to use toward the loveseat. But hey, I'm gonna need some pillows, right? So I'm not too concerned. The week of the sale, I check the website and my heart drops: the gray option is gone. I call customer service. I call my local store. Everyone I speak with tells me a different story: it was taken down because it's so popular that it's backordered too far in the future; it wasn't popular enough, so they stopped making it; the image needs retouching but it should be back on the site soon.

By the time the sale starts, it's still not online, so I go into the store and try to place my order in person. The girl behind the counter rings me up and even bumps up my discount when we discover that the gray option is priced cheaper than the orange (red flag) and won't meet the threshold for the full 30% off. Then, the first snag: there are only 18 of them left in stock, and they are all in Georgia, outside of my delivery area. I'm worried, but she assures me that her manager can call and make arrangements; they've done it before. Ta-da! Loveseat ordered.

DECEMBER, 2016

A couple weeks go by and I haven't received an update about my order. I call the store to check in and it's worse than I feared: the ones left in stock were manufactured incorrectly, and since they don't exactly match the image that was advertised, West Elm won't sell them. When I ask when new ones will be made, I'm told that it will happen but they have no idea when. I cancel my order, heartbroken.

Then, the very next day, I check the website again, and there it is! The gray loveseat! (I have an email in my Sent folder, to my mom, entitled "WTF West Elm.") 

Except, wait. The picture's different this time:

That handsome dark frame that's still paired up with the orange option had been replaced by a blonde wood. I email my store to see what's up and am told that the light wood is the manufacturing mistake and they've decided to sell them, after all. I then spend a good hour clicking back and forth between the two, trying to decide which I prefer. I poll friends and family. I deliberate. I find myself still leaning toward the dark wood — it's not that I dislike the light option, it's just that I like the dark one better! And knowing that it's out there, and could potentially be mine, halts me.

I make the decision to keep waiting, and try to find something else in the meantime.

Meanwhile, my $50 store credit arrives, and I can't find a single thing I want to spend it on.

JANUARY, 2017

Christmas is over and I'm back home in my apartment, staring forlornly at the empty space in front of my TV. I want to have people over, dammit! I also want to be able to sit through an entire movie without resorting to switching to my laptop just so I can comfortably lay in bed.

The six-month mark is looming. I want a loveseat. Fuck it.

I resolve to order the gray one, light wood and all. At this point, I realize that my birthday credit bonus never showed up and proceed to talk to three different people about getting that resolved. It finally takes a woman in a Las Vegas call center to get me that additional $25 off, but I secure it, add in a $15 holiday bonus (merry Christmas, indeed), my $50 sign-up bonus, and place my order — price-matched to the original request.

Then I wait.

FEBRUARY, 2017

It's here! It's here! It's here! Three weeks later, it's arrived at my local store. I'm a scrooge, so I've waived the delivery (an extra $120? no, thank you) and instead rented a UHaul van and guilt-tripped one of my coworkers into helping me. We get to the store, a couple of their guys load the gigantic box into the back, and we're on our way.

When we get to my apartment, we quickly realize that the size of the box makes it almost impossible to get a good grip, so we unwrap it right there in the street and bring the loveseat inside with no trouble. It's when I go back outside to move the cardboard out of the road, however, that I see it: one of the legs, broken off and still in the box.

Fuuuuuuck. 

I email the pictures to the store, and since it's such a jagged break, they promise to send a new replacement loveseat, no delivery charge.

Oooookay.

Determined to enjoy my loveseat that very weekend, I prop the corner on a jar of quinoa (I later switch to a more stable combination of rock-and-can-of-tuna fish when Katie yells at me) and proceed to watch several hours of the FX O.J. Simpson mini series, eventually falling asleep under a pile of laundry. I'm living that sweet loveseat life.

Two weeks go by and I'm told that the new loveseat is ready to be delivered on Saturday. I'm given a time window and promised that they'll call when they're a half hour away. Good, good.

Saturday morning, I get up and run my errands so I'll be home in time. When I'm five minutes away from my apartment, I get a call from the store: the delivery men tried to deliver my loveseat, and it was refused, so they left and have gone on to their next appointment.

Several problems with this. One: I never received a call saying they were on their way. Two: I never received a call saying they'd arrived. Three: They tried to deliver it to my landlord which, if they had called, they would have known was the wrong apartment. I'm told that they cannot come back later in the day, and that I might have to wait until Monday for the delivery.

And this is where I lose it. I've worked in customer service, both as an operator in a call center and as a store employee, so I know how shitty it is to deal with an angry customer. I've really tried to stay calm and reasonable throughout this entire ordeal, going out of my way to be polite and thankful to everyone who helped me, but this. will. not. stand.

I have some stern words with the very nice store manager and tell her that this is unacceptable (key angry customer word) and there is no way I'm waiting until Monday, especially since I have work that day. MAKE IT WORK, WEST ELM.

The good news is that they were able to arrange the delivery for the next day, and that the delivery men seemed very scared of me when they arrived. Oh, and also I now have a functional, in-tact loveseat.

I will say this: that light wood frame looks damn good with the rest of my apartment. So that snafu was a bit of a blessing, after all.

After all that, will I be shopping with West Elm again? I mean, yeah, because I still have store credit to use up, but I don't think I can recommend ordering large furniture from them. (Craigslist, however, is still #1 in my heart.) We'll see what their response is to my very long, very detailed, very annoyed letter of complaint.

In the meantime, if you need me, I'll be on my loveseat. Probably napping underneath some laundry.

When I Get Bored, I Paint.

I have a problem with sitting still.

Faced with a weekend of no plans, I find myself physically incapable of just sleeping in, vegging out, and watching endless amounts of garbage TV. Don't get me wrong — I can work my way through a random series just as well as the next gal, but it's always accompanied by some chore, some project, some other task.

That's how I ended up painting my coffee cart a few weeks ago.

In the midst of my flurry of little projects, I began toying with the idea of adding some more color to my apartment. Yes, the photos helped, but the fact remains that I live in a giant, beige box filled with endless amounts of light-colored wood. Painting the walls is too large of a cost and undertaking, but I could paint more furniture. And after my dresser project, I've fallen ever more in love with the idea of a deep, rich navy as a neutral. So I decided to paint my cart to match.

Nothing like some quality time in the dungeon, listening to My Favorite Murder, and inhaling paint fumes. Best weekend ever.

I like.

Dresser Shenanigans

Like most of my more ridiculous ideas, it started with asking Katie for help.

You might recall Katie as the recipient of my infamous jellypenis painting. The fact that she proudly displays this in her apartment says a lot about her willingness to put up with my idiotic schemes.

"Can you do me a favor?"

I innocently tested the waters and then quickly launched into the backstory.

"So I was supposed to pick up this dresser from Craigslist last night, but the girl changed the pickup time and I wouldn't have had anyone to help me unload my car at that point. And I needed my car empty to pick up those chairs the next day. So I had to cancel our arrangement...but the dresser is still for sale. And she's moving out tomorrow. And I still want it."

And, more importantly, I felt like the seller might be willing to agree to a lower price than we had arranged, since she was getting down to the wire. But I had already tried negotiating, and then bailed, so I didn't have the best track record with this person.

"So...you want me to respond to the Craigslist ad for you?" Katie asked.

She just gets me.

This is the dresser I was obsessed with.

My job often requires me to scope out competitor furniture retailers, and when I stumbled upon this dresser from Land of Nod, I was hooked. 

It was bold. It was glamorous yet handsome. It was the low, wide style I was looking for. (Though, okay, probably bigger than I realistically needed.)

It was eleven-hundred-freaking-dollars.

After watching it for months, I knew there was no way it would ever drop into what I would consider an acceptable price range. So I went with Plan B: find a campaign-style dresser on Craigslist and treat it to a fresh coat of paint.

That's how I ended up outside an apartment building in Somerville on a Thursday evening, prepared to introduce myself as Kathryn.

I shouldn't have worried. The girl was so relieved to get rid of the thing that she simply opened the door and led me upstairs without confirming who I was. (Fabulous. I'm terrible at lying.)

If you were reading the blog of a normal, sane person, the next step would be to take the dresser home. This, however, is my blog. So, like the weirdo I am, I then drove on to a hockey game in downtown Boston, where I deposited my car (filled to capacity with an old dresser and drawers) in the sketchiest parking lot ever. And I went to see my Red Wings crush the Bruins.

Maybe it was the rush of the win. Maybe it was all those extra sessions of Kick It class. Maybe it was a tear in the space-time continuum. I honestly have no explanation for how it happened, but it did: when I got home from the game, I unloaded the dresser and carried it into my apartment. By myself.

To provide a little context for this anomaly, you should know that my nickname during high school summer softball was "Twig." Friends have been known to refer to me as "tiny."

You know those stories about moms who lift cars off their kids in moments of extreme stress? Me, I lift heavy pieces of furniture when I know I need to drive my car to a date the next day.

One of the nicest things about my new apartment is that it comes with a huge, dark, scary storage area. I think most people would probably only venture in there to do laundry and leave it be the rest of the time, but the second my landlord showed it to me, I knew it was destined to become my own personal dungeon-slash-work room.

The entire makeover process took a few weeks. First, I needed to clean the thing, remove all the hardware, sand down the chips and scratches the best I could, and slap together a new corner using layers and layers of spackle (I don't recommend this remedy, but hey, it worked).

Once that was done, I primed it all, and then it was the moment of truth: picking the right paint color.

I'd like to say that I was smart and got a couple tester cans so I could be sure of the color before committing, but I totally didn't and bought the wrong color on the first try. Don't be like me, folks.

This is about the point where I called Katie in a panic and told myself over and over again that I was an idiot. Fun times painting!

My second pick was much, much better, and I actually only needed the small tester can to cover the entire dresser in two coats of paint. Go figure.

Meanwhile, the metal knobs, pulls, and corner pieces could use a little help. Initially, I tried just scrubbing everything with a mixture of salt and white vinegar, but that didn't have much effect. Steel wool and Barkeeper's Friend, however, did the trick.

Here's where I ended up:

It's not a perfect match for the Land of Nod one, but the influence is there! And I like that it's completely different from anything I've ever had before. (Okay, and I like that it was one-tenth the cost of the original, too.)

Now my clothes are all put away and my apartment is starting to look less like it was hit by a tornado. Can you say "progress"?

Project: Dining Chairs

Remember that chair I mentioned last time? The one I got for the back balcony that ended up destroying hours and hours of my life because I foolishly refused to give up on it?

It looks like chairs are my kryptonite.

Back when I had an alert set up for "dining chairs" on Craigslist, I got an email with an ad for four of these, for FREE. Right price? Check. And there's something about the style that I think is just so cool. I have no idea what that style is, but I like it. (As far as I can tell, "that" style does not exist.)

The seats are going to get recovered so I can finally try my hand at upholstering, and at first, the plan was to leave it at that. I was going to just clean up the wood a bit and focus my efforts on the seats. But then they sat around in my dining room for a week, and the darker wood didn't look right with any of the patterns and colors I was leaning toward. And even after I wiped them down with some Murphy's, there was still this gross waxy film that I didn't want to think too hard about. And I wasn't loving how the finish of the chairs went with the wood floor and the wood paneling on the walls.

And then I wondered: what if I sanded down the current finish and redid it? They're always doing it on HGTV shows and Apartment Therapy and all over the interwebs, so why couldn't I? So I sanded a small part on the underside of one of the chairs, just to see what it would look like.

I loved it. I loved it just as it was, lighter and more casual and soft to the touch. It reminded me of driftwood, and would look amazing with a colorful tribal pattern or something a little more boho.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had started sanding the top side of the chair, merrily going along my way. Sanding. And sanding. And sanding. Twenty minutes passed, and I remembered something: I HATE sanding. The sound is grating and gives me goosebumps and it's slow and it makes a big mess and it's SLOW.

I broke out the power sander, sure that it would be my savior. But after only another twenty minutes or so, I had to stop because I couldn't feel my hands anymore.

These four chairs have been sitting in the dining room for MONTHS now. Every time I try to get a little more work done, I don't last more than an hour before I have to give up again, and I'm left covered in sawdust, ears ringing, hands still vibrating.

I don't know what to do. I still really like the chairs. And a recent compliment from Andy's aunt confirmed that they are, actually, really nice. But I can't keep letting this project drag. The dining room — which, in my defense, barely got used to begin with — is now a wreck of sandpaper, rags, power tools, and unusable space. It's the only common room in the apartment left that I haven't fixed up yet, and I was really hoping to get the ball rolling with these chairs.

But, guys. The SANDING. It's killing me.

What do I do? Give in and junk them? Stick with it? Anyone know some tricks to make sanding less painful? I'm thinking of trying a chemical stripper, but they sound kind of scary. Help!