I don’t like to say I’m cheap.
I don’t like to say I’m short, either. I like to say I’m fun-sized, and I re-use Kleenex.
Anyway, cheapness really didn’t have much to do with why it took me so long to replace the seat cushion in our rattan chair. It’s more that every time I think about buying something for my house, I feel all tired and shit. When I was younger, I’d fritter away money on little doo-dads and pick-me-ups that I didn’t really need. Now, the thought of bringing anything into the house fills me with horror. There’s too much stuff. It needs to go in the other direction.
Still, this furniture in the kitchen has seen better days, and not recently. It’s a little loveseat and a swivel chair, in rattan. We don’t really have room for actual upholstered furniture in this room, and the rattan worked great. If we got an honest loveseat with upholstered arms that fit in this 51” space, we’d have to keep butt calipers around to gauge if two people could fit in it at once. Socially, it’s awkward.
The swivel chair cushion looks like we stole it from the alley behind a meth house. There are suspicious stains and a general dinginess about it and I should have gotten a clue from the number of guests who said they were fine standing, they’d been sitting all day. Well, hell, I thought. I have the whole internet. Surely I can buy a whole new cushion for the thing.
You’d think, wouldn’t you? But this cushion had padded arms and it fit exactly in its rounded rattan confines and apparently nothing like it has been made since 1983. I could get one without arms that didn’t fit in the chair. There was no end of those.
And so, with no real hope whatsoever, I found a pretty cushion that was significantly under $100 and ordered it. It was indoor-outdoor material and too long to fit properly—it would be too tall in the back and hang shittily over the seat in front. It would be thin and Suitable For Outdoors. It was only barely worth a shot.
There’s this sort of resignation that comes with modern consumption. Not that I haven’t shopped for something in a brick-and-mortar store and brought it home and never wore it or loved it again—sure I have. But in this age you can see an ad for an absolutely adorable outfit and it will land on your porch with a thud of regret you can hear even before your phone weirdly tells you it showed up. The adorable outfit is made of plastic lint and sized for an armadillo and if you want to send it back to China for sixty bucks, why, you go ahead on.
My cushion box landed on the porch. I’ll be go to hell! I carefully opened the box so it could be returned and it bounded out of there and loped over to the swivel chair and kicked the old cushion out to the front porch and it is absolutely stunning! It could not be prettier up against Dave’s brick wall! Even hanging over the top and seat it looks tremendous! Why the hell didn’t I do this before! I was so excited I didn’t even get a photo of the old cushion in place before I sliced it up for the garbage can, and I hope the garbage man uses a mask.
So now obviously I have to reupholster the loveseat, which is only marginally less humiliating to look at. Without question this will cost five times what the little sofa cost to begin with. But the stuffing is poking through and it’s ripped, and also there was that time I discovered the mice had eaten a hole in the bottom dust cover and used the interior as a latrine, and had been doing so for some time.
Oh, hi! You don’t mind if you stand? You’ve been sitting all day?
Yay! It looks beautiful, cozy, pretty and inviting!
I got all new cushions for our patio furniture. They are so nice that I don’t even mind gathering them all up and putting them away in case it rains.
They’re supposed to take rain! Well–we likely won’t have rain here until the end of October, then no sun till June.
I love the pattern of the new cushion! You’re right, it does look great against “Dave’s brick wall.” Didn’t wherever you got it from have that particular pattern in a size that fit the loveseat? My go-to place whenever I need something for the home is Wayfair. They seem to have everything. I used to like going to “B-cubed” (Bed, Bath, and Beyond) when they had a brick and mortar store in my area to get things I needed in person. I mean SOME things you really need to buy in person, like bed pillows, as we like them firm. I have been disappointed when buying towels online, because they are WAY too fluffy and heavy. Wrapping my wet hair in a bath towel practically tips me over! If I had bought them in person, I would have been able to know that and buy something else.
I think I did get that cushion from Wayfair, and no, I couldn’t find anything for the sofa anywhere.
I was just getting ready to ask you how Tater was doing and there she (?) is.
I’m a fan of early American curbside. Or I was before the resurgence of bed bugs. Also when I had a truck. Can’t fit things into the Corolla like I could in the S10.
Upholstered furniture is one of the only things that isn’t automatically snapped up if you put it on the curb, around here. Amazing what people WILL take, though.
Oh, I LOVE big trash day and dumpster diving! At least I did before we had everything we needed and were actually jettisoning stuff. One big trash day, we put some old porch furniture out on the curb, as Paul was going to haul it off to the dumpster in his truck. Well, he didn’t have to. Someone rang the doorbell and asked if we were getting rid of it and if they could take it. I said YES! And what’s more, I left the cushions inside in case it rained… let me get them. They only lived about a block away and hauled it off on their own. Win-win!
Once Dave jackhammered the front sidewalk to replace it and was not looking forward to getting rid of it. I put a little notice in and two people volunteered to pick it up. We went away for the weekend and when we got home it was all gone, including dust.
I love your readers. “Wrapping up my wet hair in a bath towel practically tips me over”, “Early American curbside”…. I am a chair lover and can haul quite a bit in the old forester… and I have been known to recover a cushion or two. I am sort of like my grown son. Wants that t-shirt neck broken in, not stiff and tight like brand new. Thank you for the good laugh and gorgeous cushion by the way….
This comment section is a nice place if I do say so myself. One of these days when I run out of ideas I’ll just say “Worst moments at age thirteen. Go!”
Being at a sleep-over and getting my first period.
Also, zits.
I set a sofa out curbside and in no time a team of metal thieves showed up to disassemble it! Oh and by the way, I’ve found nice slipcovers at https://www.lightinthebox.com/
Metal thieves are hitting SOFAS now? Lord love a duck in springtime.
The cushion is beautiful.
You know? It is.
The new cover is awesome — and Tater seems to be enjoying it too!
Tater tends to be comfortable ‘most anywhere as a matter of policy.
I was going to say summat ‘ bout your cat an’ dang me! If’n some on’ else done it already. But about that swivel chair…we’d had one for yonks ( I think that’s the equivalent of donkeys years) and had lugged it all the way (many,many miles) and one day a neighour was sitting there, having a coffee and chatting…and she asked where I got it. Hell’s bells! It was so long ago I didn’t remember! But she and her husband had just built a very BIG deck on their house and she was looking for somethin……..”take it!” I said. [No money changed hands, but I seem to recall some wine may have been involved…]
Now I want to have something for yonks. Anything.
I imagine Tater saying, “I’ve been lying around all day, but sure, I’ll lie down on the new cushion.”
In my opinion, it beats the cutting board, which seems to have caught her fancy lately. I know, I know, don’t eat at Murr’s…
At first glance I thought Tater was part of the pattern. At second glance I thought Tater was hole in the universe that neither reflects nor emits any light, like a furry black hole, but physicist John Archibald Wheeler once said ” black holes have no hair.” I wonder if he had a black cat? I suspect Tater would be flattered to hear all that, but you know better than I do. Pretty pattern, anyway! And I just loved “The adorable outfit is made of plastic lint and sized for an armadillo and if you want to send it back to China for sixty bucks, why, you go ahead on.” I know my wife would agree. You should have seen the suffering and agony in this house when she was trying to find something to wear to our younger son’s wedding…
I’d ask her what she thought about it all, but she’s in a box. Or she’s not.
There should be a joke about a school of dubious quality headed up by an uncertainty principal, but I can’t figure out just how it should go.
Schrodinger’s Middle School? You could write a poem about it.
OK! What rhymes with σx σp ≥ ħ/2 ?
Oh — I think I found some subscripts. NOW it should rhyme. With something…
σₓσₚ ≥ ħ/2
I lived in New Jersey by mistake for a year. We set out a dresser with a broken drawer and a missing drawer for trash. Someone wanted it and asked if we would fix the drawer for them and get them the other drawer.