The Holtonian

Armoire Adventures and Future home Improvements

The wife and I spent a good long time shopping for some new furniture the past two days. It started on Friday when after a date to Outback we went to Target and saw a few entertainment centers we liked. We didn't love any of them and thought they were nice but not for our living room. One in particular was really cool but was too rustic for our house, and another was ok, but upon closer inspection looked pretty cheapy. So we decided to sleep on it and hit a few real furniture stores in the morning.

We got out early and hit Factory Direct. They pretty much had two to three that we liked. One was really nice for about 600 but was way too long. At one time we wanted one that would take up an entire wall, but since then we've redesigned our living room and now we need one that could fit in a corner. So they had two that would fit in a corner, a black little one that was pretty nice at 400 bucks though its depth was the exact depth of the TV, so no room for error, which I didn't like. Plus it was black and we were just not really sold on the black furniture in our house (everything else we own in that room is white or a dark wood finish). They also had a corner piece that was perfect but was 800 bucks and was just too too expensive .

So we zipped over the Unfinished Furniture. We really liked this place and found about three pieces that were good. One was 200 bucks and was literally just a box with two doors. You opened it up and it had one shelf that wasn't adjustable and nothing else. But I could easily add another shelf. The price was really tempting as we could get that and possibly a new TV with it. The problems with it were it had rustic wood look that after staining would still be rustic, rustic hardware (not hard to replace though), and the main thing the only shelf in it was in a bad spot, too low for a TV. But it was a front-runner because of the price. Then there was a similar piece that had a drawer and an adjustable shelf, that piece was taller too and was about 300 bucks. Then in the back they had exactly what we wanted, a corner piece. It was amazingly cool. It was 488 though and it was hard to pull all the money out for that one. But it was what we wanted, but we figured we should look around some more.

We drove to Badcock Furniture to check it out, went in looked around for nearly 10 seconds and walked out, it was pretty terrible prices and furniture. We to Best Buy, more to look at TVs, but they also had a few entertainment stands and what not. Then we went over to Inside Outside a sort of miscellaneous junk store that has furniture. They didn't have what we were looking for but did have some intriguing stuff. So we drove all over Chattanooga and ended back at Unfinished.

But as we go to ponder over the decision some more we find another piece that we hadn't seen before. This one was 388 so a bit cheaper, pine, and was a six feet tall (the others were about chest height), had two doors on top and two on bottom, two shelves one on each level and room for more. This piece was by far the best buy as it has the potential to be used anywhere in the house. See the problem with a corner piece is it will always be in the corner. And if we move to a house where we don't want our TV in a corner then we're screwed, so this piece gives us some flexibility on where it can be used and just seemed to be the best buy. WIfey watched the how to stain video at the store and will probably get to work on it on Monday, she likes doing stuff like that and is more exact and perfectionistic than me so she'll do a better job. So we're pretty excited about it. Hopefully the stain will go on well, I've heard sometimes it doesn't, but the guys there told us all the tricks and we'll probably practice on the inside of the piece and the shelves before we hit the outside. So we got another project.

Another project that I might start on soon for the days its rainy and I can't work on the fence is some built in book shelves up stairs in one of the bed rooms up there. We plan on moving the office, currently downstairs, when wee ones start to show up and have it be in the bedroom upstairs. We already sort of have cheap "built in book shelves" in the downstairs office now, basically boards with brackets. I'll take the boards, finish painting them (the prior owners only painted half of the them---they were so lazy) and then screw them together to basically some outer planks and fasten it to the walls upstairs. It will require some work but thinking about it I think it can be done with not too much hard work. The hard part will be setting them up, not putting them together. The problem I'll run into is carpet upstairs and may have to do some research on the best way to handle the carpet situation.

So as usual there's no shortage of projects. Its fun though and helps the old equity. Plus keeps us from wasting money on other things like food and water.