It's hard to believe that it is only 8:30 right now. Having woken up at 6:30 for work, worked all day, and did a bunch of apartment shopping this evening, I feel like I'm ready for bed. It also doesn't help that the sky is almost the color of midnight. As we were driving back from IKEA and Jordan's I felt myself crashing. The feeling of relaxation and exhaustion was overpowering. For once I was actually glad for the chill in the air; it woke me up a bit more. There is still a whole lot more to do tonight.
On any other day, I would hold off of what's needed. We've done a lot in one day as it is. However, tonight we found and bought a couch. It's perfect. Not only did it feel comfortable but it was way cheaper than I had intended on spending when I first started thinking about our apartment project. I don't feel guilty about spending the money at all. It was also the best couch we sat in since we began searching. Searching for a couch is a lot like playing Goldilocks in the fairy tale. You have to find the couch that's just right. not too hard or too soft. In addition, you want to find one in the correct size. With a small apartment, we can't really incorporate massive furniture. Finally, there is also fabric selection and color to consider.
Oddly enough, when I first started planning I envisioned us with a light green couch. Our current loveseat is a brownish gray and as our little apartment also lacks natural sunlight, the darkness of the color was something we wanted to step away from. Because our walls are painted with a very bland off-white, we had two options. One, we could repaint them and then repaint them again after moving out which just seems rather silly. Or we could make our bland walls work for us. How does this relate to our couch? Finding a light couch that didn't seem like a weird extension of our wall was more difficult than I anticipated. We could have gone with a gray color but we thought that it leave us feeling a bit drab.
As you know, I've had a very love/hate relationship with this apartment. Dave and I have lived here for over two years now and have yet to figure out a way to make this place work for us. When we decided to renew the lease it was under the condition that we actually gave this place a bit more of a personality. To help me do this, I turned to the book Apartment Therapy: The Eight Week Cure. It was written by the creator of apartmenttherapy.com. In his book, he suggested that we determine the feel we wanted for each of our room and what exactly we wanted to do in them. We decided that we wanted our living room to be a place where we could sit and relax as well as a room that can accommodate company.
With this in mind, I began thinking about colors. It was at this point that I thought a pale or light green sofa just might do the trick. The light colors didn't feel right and the browns all seemed to dark. The bright colors of IKEA also seemed too much for our little space. Dave had initially suggested a red couch which I would have been all about if our living room wasn't directly attached to our kitchen. According to color therapy, red is most often used in restaurants because it is said that we tend to associate the color with hunger. At least, here in the U.S. anyway. The last thing I needed was my couch unconsciously working against our desire to eat well. We have enough laziness and gluttony without any addition subconscious help. So in the end, we were thinking of a pale green or blue.
However, as we continued shopping I found that I wasn't thrilled with the shades of green offered and there was very little variety of blue. Over the past month of planning I've allowed myself to reconsider it all together. Today while walking in the outlet section of Jordan's we found a very comfortable brown couch for $400. It totally came in under our budget, it was a good size, and it was comfortable. The biggest downside was that it only came in brown. Despite our decision to continue walking through the rest of the store, we had decided that it would probably be our chosen one. It seemed very unlikely that we would find something else that fit the budget criteria. We were wrong! Not long after we found another super comfortable sofa for only $100 more. It also came in many different colors.
We sat and looked at the color squares for a bit until one of the sales people came over to us as asked if we needed assistance. We decided to get his opinion on the color. The first thing he said was "if you like the current color, we may have that in stock. Other colors may bring the cost up and could take up to four or six weeks to get it in. Guess which color the couch we happened to be sitting in was? Yes, it most definitely was a pale green very similar to what I had initially envisioned. Dave and I discussed it some more, looked around the rest of the store just to make sure there wasn't something we liked better, and decided that we were in fact going to buy it in the pale green. It will be coming home with us tomorrow! He is even having it sent to our local Jordan's so we don't have to drive all the way there to pick it up.
Because Jordan's is a local furniture chain, they run cool sports deals all the time. This year, I have one more big reason to root for our Boston Bruins. If they win the Stanley Cup this year, we will get this couch for free. They will actually write us a check for the purchase price. Go Bruins!!!
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