A dining suite. We had it delivered yesterday.
Back at the beginning of the year, we thought we'd practice living off Al's salary (I might have told you about this already, so if I'm repeating myself just skip to the next paragraph), and so we made a shopping list of some big ticket items we wanted, and budgeted to pay for these from my salary. So, it's not really living off one salary, it's just that we're being disciplined with mine, and not pissing it against the wall. In theory. So far it's not so bad ...but it is quite lucky that it's only a practice run. Ahem.
On said list of big ticket items was a new dining suite. We had a small 4 seater jobbie, but it was small, and thinking ahead to entertaining and having a family, we thought we'd really like something bigger - a 6 or 8 seater. So, when my brother came up to do the bathroom, he took the old set (cheap labour! plus then we didn't need to muck around trying to sell it), and we were just going to get a new one in due course. Since we've just had a big bill with the bathroom, the plan was that we'd get onto it in a month or two. We have a place where we get all our wooden furniture - their prices are good and their stuff is good quality and really solid.
We were in the general area of the furniture place on Sunday and thought we just go and have a nosey and see what they had, and get a price etc. Except, there was a problem. A big problem. Painted across the entire frontage of our store, in huge red letters, were three words which normally would have set my heart to racing happily, but on this occasion didn't so much. It was more like blind panic. CLOSING DOWN SALE. I love a good sale as much as the next person, but the problem was that we'd obviously missed it and the store had already closed! Aaargh! I still haven't decided whether I was mortified they'd closed down, or mortified that I missed the sale. I almost feel as though they should apologise to us for closing though, either way ...
After that little hitch in our plans we thought we'd better just get an idea of prices elsewhere, and see what else is around, so we could budget on it etc. I had a really specific idea of what I wanted (which always makes for frustrating shopping), and I really didn't think I'd be able to find it. I wanted plain, clean lines. Blocky, 'country' style. No turned legs etc. Wood with a darker stain, but not dark dark. No light wood. Oh dear.
Freedom Furniture was where it all went horribly wrong for the second time. In the true nature of these things, although I didn't expect to find anything there, we did. It was absolutely perfect. As far as furniture goes, there are some things out there which look great when they're brand new, and even better when they're beaten to within an inch of their wee lives. Our leather lounge suite is one of those things. Our dining suite will be another. It'll look great as it ages, and dings will just add character. And believe me, it'll be getting plenty of dings. That's why I was looking for such a specific thing. I made a note of the style etc, and the price (eek! I've had a few price-related heart attacks in my life, but seriously!) which was quite a lot more than we were intending to pay, and that was, in theory, that. Except, I grabbed a salesperson to ask if we could order different fabric for the chair seats. Just out of curiosity. Woops. Big mistake. Huge. The salesperson merrily informed us that the suite was a discontinued line, and that the chairs before us were the last of the lot. No more. Nada. Zip. End of the road. Crap. So we bought it.
My poor, poor budget.
We saved $1,200.00 on the buy, but I still feel a tad ill.
Al has been duly and severely warned too that even though we have a nice big table in the kitchen now, that does not mean that he can cover a greater surface area with junk. You know how these things happen. It's like when you move into a bigger house, and somehow there still isn't room for all your crap. This of course means that I'm going to have to make sure that I don't cover the new table with junk too. I'm very bad at that ... telling him off for things whilst doing the exact same thing myself. Like the broken toe incident of 2005. I kicked one of his steel capped boots which was lying on the kitchen floor as I walked past it (accidentally of course) and broke my little toe (he was size 13-14 boots, so they weigh a ton, and if you kick them, there is no give whatsoever. And the toe was definitely broken, believe me). As I was swearing up a storm at him for leaving his boots lying around, I turned around and tripped over my own shoes which were strewn about behind me. I suppose at least he had the good grace to go down the other end of the house before he weed himself laughing. Probably because I was also in close proximity to the kitchem knives at the time, and I wasn't really in the frame of mind to see the error of my ways.
Anyway! I digress. Or waffle. Or whatever. The point is ....goodness knows. Oh, yes. We have a gorgeous new dining suite, and have therefore knocked off two of our five major planned purchases for this year, plus a holiday, and it's only the beginning of April. Even I don't want to go shopping again for a while!
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