New furniture

Just a quick update to my last post. Here's our new bedroom set:

Bed and nightstand:


Dresser and mirror:



The new bed is *huge*! I'm still getting acclimated to the new mattress. I slept fairly well last night, though have been fighting some unrelated insomnia lately. It is still off-gassing a bit, but that should hopefully go away soon.

We got a good waterproof (but not crinkly) mattress pad at Kohl's (my first time ever in a Kohl's - it was right next door to the furniture store) at 50% off. Saved even more on a set of Vera Wang sheets (they were in the clearance section).

Furniture shopping

-D and went furniture shopping the weekend before this past one (so, the 5th). We didn't have a whole lot of time, and the stores are all about 45 minutes or so away. So we decided we'd go to Raymour & Flanigan first. We ended up with some extra time, so went to Bob's afterwards, too, for some comparing.

Impressions: sales people can be a bit pushy. There's just no getting around it. The sales guy at R&F was respectful, while also trying to do his job. He realized that we aren't loaded and didn't try to push us out of our price range. He was honest if one that we liked the look of didn't stack up in terms of quality, and pointed us to what were actually less expensive alternatives with better quality. We were there for bedroom furniture and a new mattress, but took a few minutes to browse couches and dining room/kitchen sets. Every time we stopped and he was nearby, he'd be sure to point out the price and features of that particular one. But on the whole, not a bad guy. He also told us about a sale that would be happening the following Wednesday only, and that he'd give us that sale early, if we ended up buying anything.

Then we went to Bob's, for comparison, and to see what they had to offer. There is no comparison in quality as far as the bedroom sets go. Where just about everything at R&F was dovetailed, everything was stapled at Bobs. Wood quality, craftsmanship - all of it better at R&F, thus justifying the higher price. Bob's is great if you want something that looks decent but doesn't need to handle a lot of use. With the sale at R&F, the price difference just wasn't enough for us to go with Bobs. The mattresses (or at least a couple of the better ones we tried) were comparable (price included), but again, with the sale at R&F, it made more sense to just get everything there.

So Wednesday night, we went back and ordered our new bedroom set from R&F. We've got a new, king-sized bed coming (woot!), along with dresser, mirror, and nightstand. They should arrive some time tomorrow morning.

This weekend we worked on shifting our furniture at home around - the full-size guest bed has been moved to the attic, and our queen-sized bed is now the guest bed. What I've been using as a dresser will be headed tonight to the 3-season porch for organizing my dyeing and spinning supplies.

This year's planning

Before I start, I just want to mention that we did manage to enlarge our driveway last year. -D works for a paving company, so for the price of a case of (cheap) beer (they don't like the good stuff), we have widened the driveway by about a foot, maybe a bit more, and extended it lengthwise by about a foot. So we can now fit four cars in our driveway.

So, -D and I were talking this weekend about what our projects will be this year. We have some exciting, but not yet revealable, news, but suffice it to say it'll require a bit of replanning. We're getting a great tax return, so hopefully our plans will survive.

Top priority is the porch roof. It seriously needs doing. We just need to get some friends over to do it. -D wants to check one of the local places to see what it would cost for metal roofing that we install (rather than having it installed - the quote we got for that was too high). But it will be done once the weather is more predictably warm.

Next is our kitchen. To get it done, we're going to need to take down some of the horsehair, and all of the original wainscoting, then sheetrock, mud, paint, etc. So there will be a weekend of no kitchen while we tape it off for some demo. Painting may end up a bit tricky on account of the unrevealed news, but we'll figure it out.

Also on the list is a new bedroom set. It would be fantastic to have a matching bedroom set. If we're going to do that, we may as well upgrade to a king sized bed, too, right? Not entirely sure on style yet, and I like the colors in there as they are (I painted before we moved in). But a new bedroom set, and probably a layout change.

Then there's our back yard. I really want to get the retaining wall terraced (to hold back erosion). In November, I cleaned out "the hill", just raking and pulling out the dead stuff. So it's mostly down to bare dirt for the winter (with perennial roots buried) and looks nice and neat, rather than the chaos of dead leaves and seed stalks. I did pull a few of the more shallow roots when I did it - I figure if it didn't need a shovel to remove, it probably wasn't holding back too much of the soil. It needs the terracing before I can nuke it like we did the side yard, lest we end up with a mud puddle at the base of the wall.

Once the upper wall is terraced, we'll hope that we have the funds to get a wall in about a third of the way down our backyard (which is sloped), to level that space and create a patio and play space for Bug.

So those are the plans. We'll see what we can do with them.