Lazy Boy (& Girl)

This weekend we took a little trip into the serious furniture shopping world. Since what we have now consists of a yard sale coffee table and 4 camping chairs, we both agreed that we could use a few more items to spruce up McNest. Being nearlyweds is a funny thing. I’ve found that there are many, many super generous people who want to give us stuff that they no longer want. Believe me we definitely appreciate the generosity! If it’s free it’s for me is a motto we like to use these days. However, I don’t want all of our furniture to be classified as Early American Bargain Basement.

Furniture shopping is a lot of things…but I think I’ve found that it is mostly exciting, entertaining and expensive. You really have to have a goal – our goal was to find pieces that really expressed who we are. So basically we were looking for furniture that screamed “we are nap people.”



A quick trip to a local furniture dealer got us started and then across the street we found our first rude awakening. Apparently we walked right into the Biltmore House Furniture Company. Dark woods, deep leathers, and daunting prices surrounded us. Needless to say – it was a little bit more upscale than what we were going for. The first chair (chair in the singular – as in one chair) we came to costs a little over $1,000 (on sale no less!). There was nothing special about it. It didn’t do any sort of tricks or like come with 3 more that looked just like it. For the first time in my life my materialistic desires were outweighed by my desire to save money.

It’s harder than you might think. We looked at a little bit of everything, but ended up focusing on couches and recliners. Snuggling up in a camping chair just isn’t going to cut it forever. Comfort and relaxation hold a dear place in Eddie’s life (and in mine) so we spent many hours sitting down and relaxing just like we were at home. You really must try it all out before you buy it. We definitely didn’t want to buy the most beautiful couch and recliner set on the showroom floor only to get them back to McNest and on the first recline find that they are not nearly as comfortable as they are pretty.

We tested them for comfort. I developed an ideal squishiness (shout out to Meredith!) to firmness ratio that I was working with during each test. You don’t want hard as a rock, but you don’t want to sink so far down that you need additional help to get up from it either. Eddie tested the lean your head back and zone out capabilities. I tested the napability factor of the couches (since that is where I tend to do my most productive sleeping). I guess if you really get down to it – we’re looking for a couch and recliner that have all of the features of a comfortable bed. I mean we could try to be all different and cool and new age trendy and put beds into the living room for our company to come chill out on, but I’m thinking that’s totally not socially acceptable :)

At any rate, we found many things we liked that came with prices that we didn’t like. I loved the oversized chairs – especially the round ones that swivel – fun times! Not practical in the least – but sometimes I like to throw caution to the wind. Mostly – we do agree on what we want – now we’re just on the hunt for who has it at “our price.”

If all else fails, we can just take a bunch of floor pillows and arrange them into a couch- shape. We’re non-traditional like that yo.