Well, now that I solved the problem of the ratty swivel chair with an $86 cushion, there’s no ignoring its ratty cousin, the love seat. The rattan love seat has endured forty years of nearly continuous abrasion by butts in jeans, and the pointy parts of two cats and a dog, and it once hosted a colony of kitchen mice who drilled into the dust cover on the bottom to store their little mouse doots for, apparently, weeks. It’s tidy of them, in a way, but not in a way we fully appreciate.
We have a relatively commodious kitchen for a house this old and we like people to be able to lounge around in it. The whole point of getting the rattan love seat in the first place was that it fit perfectly between two windows in the kitchen, and most sofas don’t, even most love seats. After the mouse incursion I was all on fire to ditch the sofa and replace it, but I couldn’t find anything small enough, so I just went with my three-point plan: bleaching, gagging, and not telling a soul.
Clearly, though, we can no longer countenance the thing now that the swivel chair is spiffed up. It doesn’t even match anymore. I decided to look into reupholstering. There isn’t really a lot of upholstering to do; it’s mostly just a hodgepodge of loose cushions that slouch around like boys in a frat house. I sent some pics to an upholstery outfit and got my estimate.
$2500.
Damn thing probably cost $300 to begin with and yes, that was when you could rent a whole house for less than that a month, and gas up a car for a fiver, and Ronald Reagan was only starting to get traction with his project to suck all the money out of the little people and give it to the financial sector. But it’s just not a $2500 sofa. I went to a real store and started looking around.
A nice lady wanted to know if I needed any help.
“I need a sofa, but it has to be really small.”
Love seats! Here, and here, and over here.
“Yeah, actually, it can’t be any longer than 51 inches.”
Evidently there’s a range of sizes even in the love seat category, appropriate to the fanny width of the seated people involved, and the degree of their affection for each other. But 51 inches was pushing the limit. I told her I guessed I was out of luck.
“Nonsense,” she said, but politely. “What you need is a Cuddle Chair.”
I will be go to hell. In the vast world of furniture between Galloping Sectional and Old Lady Wingback there are named increments to put a blender to shame. And she could design me a properly upholstered Cuddle Chair to fit two.
“They have to like each other kind of a lot,” she said. “Or you could seat one wide person with a healthy self-regard.”
Who knew? We didn’t need a love seat. We ordered a Cuddle Chair in nubbly fabric that might match a teddy bear and it’s going to fit in beautifully. It’ll be right cozy. The next size down comes with a pregnancy test.
I have an old house, too, and it also has a commodious kitchen. Oddly, though, it didn’t have much counter space or cabinet space. What I really needed was a sideboard, but not too high, as I am short.
Now Paul and I used to do Dumpster Day, which was our high holiday, when the college kids graduated and jettisoned their belongings into dumpsters. As luck would have it, the very summer that I was fixing up the house for us to move in, we came across our sideboard in a dumpster. It was functional and looked nice in a wabi-sabi kind of way. But it had shelves on the bottom and I really would have preferred drawers. And again, as luck would have it, my next door neighbor was moving out that summer, and apropos of nothing, he asked me if I wanted 4 old wooden wine boxes. “Sure,” I said. They fit the shelves PERFECTLY, and I had my drawers.
On that same Dumpster Day, we also found a matching bookcase that fit perfectly next to the sideboard (I keep my cookbooks there) and some matching shelving that we hung over it. The Dumpster Gods smiled on us that summer.
We no longer do Dumpster Day, as we don’t need more things, and Paul now works on Sundays. Also, the University started cracking down on people raiding dumpsters. Instead they set up a fenced-in place where students could take their stuff to be recycled. I’m glad it will be recycled for others to use, but it was so much fun to look for “treasure” in those dumpsters. I felt like a crow!
Well now! I love your bib overalls with the cat on the front.
LOL! I thought that was part of the outfit! Didn’t realize it was a cat! I thought she was wearing short black bib overalls. And I thought, “Hmmmm… I didn’t realize that Murr liked to wear black.” Yeah, my vision isn’t what it used to be.
I’m completely confused. But I’m going to start wearing my cat all the time now.
A friend of mine referred to such finds as Early American Curb-side. I was once a great fan of that and probably still would be if I still had a vehicle capable of holding furniture. Also if bed bugs hadn’t become a thing.
Back in my Rutgers’ days, I used to visit Surplus pretty regularly. Could find almost anything as long as anything was file cabinets, desks and chairs. I also visited the dumpsters there regularly.
Dave dove for burnable lumber when we still had a wood stove but even that quit showing up in dumpsters. Too valuable, I guess.
The thing with the dumpsters at our local college: their parents bought them all kinds of stuff, thinking that they would cook for themselves. Well, they didn’t. A lot of the stuff we found was new or practically new. We have a pick-up truck (we consider it essential now, as Paul hauls our trash and recycling away. Its not part of what we pay for in taxes, so we have to contract with a private trash hauler. Hell with that! It’s cheaper to do it oneself.)
I don’t like things like rugs, draperies, or upholstered furniture anyway, as I have parrots and need stuff that’s easy to clean. Leather sofas, OTOH, are good that way. But Dumpster Day was so much FUN! I could even climb into dumpsters back then! And out again! I had a bent curtain rod as a tool for poking into the detritus. We would also have brunch at some point. Fun times!
Did you…*find* the brunch?
You folks are hilarious… Nice cuddle chair. I am blown away by the coast of reupholstery. I took a class once and am attempting to do a wingback chair… Great photo of you two!
Wingback seems advanced.
A cuddle chair! That’s a new one to me and looks mighty comfortable too.
It fits tall people a lot better than it fits me, but I sit in the recliner. What is it with the super-deep furniture these days?
I , too, thought you were wearing black shorts. Old eyes give us new visions. the cuddle chair looks splendid!!
Come try it out! It would fit you PERFECTLY.
We needed a narrow loveseat for our living room and ended up buying what they call a Chair and a Half. My juvenile brother always calls it the Fat Lady Chair. As for the cat attire, I thought you were wearing an over-one-shoulder miniskirt kind of thing like Wilma Flintstone. Very becoming, but unexpected. Had to laugh when someone pointed out it was Tater!
Now I want that Wilma thing.
I’m just glad to know that I wasn’t the only one who thought you were wearing a short, black, overall sort of thing. Either my eyesight isn’t as bad as I thought, or you other guys need to get your eyes checked PRONTO.
You are just too funny. I used to haunt antique/junk stores, and I might have searched dumpsters, had I known that was a thing (back when I was nimble enough to do it – I didn’t know I could.
It IS frowned on. I was always afraid I wouldn’t be able to climb back out.