The Stages of Furniture

Just like stages in life, most furniture goes through a relatively defined path.

When we are born, we're put into cribs that our parents have purchased. In my case, being the youngest, it was a hand me down crib that had scratches on the wood, and the rattle spinners were missing in a couple places and one of them had rusted stuck. it had survived all my siblings, and many moves throughout the states. It was ugly but it worked.

Later, i shared a room with my brother and we slept in bunk beds that my father had built. To this day, i'm not sure how we never managed to knock the bunk bed over given all the flips and jumps we made out of the top bunk.

For me? ICK! 

When we got too old to share a room together, Dad took a saw and cut the bunk bed in two. Shortly thereafter, my brother and I got a little lucky. My older siblings were moving out. My brother got the older brother's thick and clunky wood bed and dresser that had under the bed storage. I got the white and gold french provincial bedroom set that my sister loved. I hated it on sight. But i had to live with that until i graduated.

(The point of that was that when we are young, we get whatever someone else buys, rarely getting a say in the matter or using hand me down pieces.)

Since i went to community college and not a university to live in the dorms, i'm going to skip over the part where you have the exact same storage as everyone else or make do with the plastic bins and drawers which are the cheapest form of storage.

Then you move out on your own. This is the point where you finally get to start making decisions for yourself. It's also the point where you realize just how expensive it really is. So you begin to build your collection from family or friend donations, sidewalk rescues, garage sales and craigslist. Sometimes you get lucky and find a nice piece. But more often than not...you get the mismatched, scratched, or painted a million times collection that just gets the job done. Sometimes it even manages to give an eclectic artistic feel. More often than not....it looks, feels and smells scavenged.

Then as your life moves on, and you get that job that pays just enough that you have some extra to play around with. It's at that point that you get the Grown-Up Furniture Set.

It's not the best materials, but it all goes together or at least looks like it does. And best of all: you got to pick it yourself! It works exactly as you need it to, it fits into your space and it looks good in your eyes.

As of today, i sold the mismatched dressers and chest of drawers that had been housing my assorted belongings. Even got more than i paid for them, thank you very much craigslist buyer. They hauled them out at lunchtime, and tonight my dad will be bringing in my new side by side 8 drawer dresser with a mirror to go with my matching night stands which i installed over the weekend.

Wanna talk lucky? Remember a ways back, i refurbished an Ikea bed frame and put it up on specially built stilts? Then those stilts were too long and i had to cut them off with a sawsall? Yeah, the nightstands are EXACTLY level with the top of the mattress. I was so shocked, i got the level out just to make sure. How unbelievable is that?

Originally, the set would have run me almost $180 but i talked them down to just over $150. Awesome sauce! Pics to follow.

Best part of all, not even a hint of white french provincial. Thank god!