Fare thee well or Am I ready for real furniture?
Months ago, we "sold" our beautiful beast, the Lincoln, and tonight, I made the way to say goodbye to another of our long friends... our 9' 6" couch... (the white one on the right... look at her in her hay day!)
This is the couch we picked up at an auction a few blocks away from our home. The couch seemed made for our house AND it was only $25. I am guessing that the people who owned it had it covered in plastic since the year it was bought. A white couch staying white all those years? Unheard of!
The tricky part for this couch was getting it to our house. We borrowed a friend's minivan and it only fit in half way. The other half precariously hung out the back of the van. I was the "weight" to balance our cantilever and our kids were in for a ride. Needless to say, it made it home in one piece.
My how we have loved this couch...
Sadly though, its life has come to an end. The fabric has literally deteriorated away. At first, I sewed it up. Then the fabric kept disappearing, leaving me nothing to grab onto and sew. Then I covered it with a blanket, the short way. It kept getting bigger and I rotated the blanket the long way. Now, the deteriorated fabric is wider than my blanket. The couch has to go.
There is something to be said for having inexpensive furniture. The kids can build forts with the cushions and hide under the cushions and stack the cushions and it is tough enough to hold out and you don't have to fear about the hundreds of dollars put into it. This couch, even though it was upstairs, was the one couch we let our kids play with.
I will miss it as our favorite place to fold laundry. And the kids favorite makeshift fort walls. And the only couch long enough for my husband to fully stretch out on. I suppose we should act our age and buy a real couch? No... not yet. Just like I am not ready to live in a house with carpet, I don't think I am ready to invest in matching furniture.
Ha
My grandma still tries to send us kids down the basement to "play" even though most of us are old enough to drink her beer! I am not sure if she will ever get out of that stage... but I do have a lot of memories with forts down the basement. Since we had ours downstairs we could keep them up for a week at a time!
I think once we get this new roof on and new gutters and all that meaning our basement doesn't leak anymore THEN I will really be excited about them building forts and leaving them downstairs. Right now we have to tear them down too quickly... praying for no rain today!! :)!
Dana, I feel your pain. We've only had our (use to be Ambre's) mile long blue couch since October but the idea of ever parting with it seems too painful. It's not that pretty, and really doesn't match the "theme" of our house, but I love it! Jonathan and I can both lay down on it, and now even Jack can too. Big cheap couches are amazing. :)
I'm not ready for matching furniture either!!! That would be a sure sign of admitting to be old. :) I'm just experiencing wood floors for the first time...I've said it several times just in the past week that I was thankful for the wood floors as I cleaned up something that would have made a real mess on carpet...but as it was wiped right off the wood floor!
How sad, Dana! That couch has served you so well, as exhibited by your photos. I still miss our old couch, which lays downstairs alone and dejected. It got so sunken in that it was very difficult to pull oneself up out of it. It wasn't the couch's fault. I hope your new couch will serve you well! I love wood floors, too. :)
Indeed women! And Sarah, Jonathan just told us the couch and mouse story! Oh my! Was that on the blue couch or a different one? Yes, babies and wood floors are the best! So much throw up those first few months! Either wood floors or a good hand held vacuum! :)! The rain has let up again! Yeah!! Here we go again on the roof!