Sliding Down That Slippery Slope of Home Decor

In case I have not made myself abundantly clear, Shlomo and I were seriously out of control in New York. When we left for the trip, we thought our living room was perfect. Within one hour of checking into our hotel, we had bought a chair that turned the entire room upside down. The chair, made of black shell lining applied over wood, led to the purchase of end tables. Then, there was a console table that can only be described as a big slab o’ wood with which we fell in love. That meant we had to change some of the art in the room. You can see, it was a slippery slope.

Well, we got home. We moved out the old and are waiting for the new stuff to arrive. It became abundantly clear that one more thing had to go: the brown fabric recliners. It’s not that the chairs were terrible. They are not. However, I had visions for Frasier Crane’s apartment. You know the one: the perfect sofa, the perfect art, the perfect objet strewn about. It’s all modern, yet traditional—decorated, yet not. Then, there it is…that big, ugly chair. All that was missing from ours, was the duct tape.

As a result, we decided if we had gone that far in our redecorating, we could look at new chairs. Let me say this from the outset: 1) I hate shopping for upholstered furniture. 2) Our chairs, while not that bad, were in fact a weak link in the room.

I would tell you we got up bright and early on Saturday to hit the ground running, but we really did not. We were, however, out of the house by 10:30. First stop: breakfast. What can I say? My mother trained me well. The key for any successful day of shopping is food for sustenance.

As a general rule, we knew that none of the big chain furniture stores would have what we wanted. I am not sure how we knew that, because we weren’t sure what we wanted. So we started with a few of the more specialized (read: pricey) local stores. I am not sure what they think makes their stuff so special, but it is not.

I won’t bore you with the details, but we went to 18 different furniture stores over the course of two days. We wound up ordering two of these. We thought they said modern, but traditional…comfortable, but attractive. They were in the fourth store.
We could be wrong, however. At one point on Saturday, we seriously considered this in a combination of brown leather and either a taupe or grey fabric. I chalk it up to simple giddiness from a long day of looking at furniture. I am not saying there is anything wrong with them. They are very comfortable. In the right environment, they would be great. Our living room (with an antique French table between them) is not the right environment.




I also knew we were in a bit of trouble when we found ourselves considering ivory leather. There is nothing about our living room that says, "Add some ivory leather, please."

So now, we wait. The rest of the stuff from New York should arrive on Saturday. The chairs should be delivered next week.

In the meantime, we have the existing painting of Pansy hung beside a dining room chair next to a big orange vase/umbrella stand from the entry hall to provide a very bad approximation of the black shell chair and end tables. Then, we used blue painters tape to mark where the big slab o’ wood table will go. We then taped photos of the painting and sculpture over it. I kid you not. It takes a little imagination at the moment, but I am pretty sure our living room will be even better than before.