Stuff that happens sometimes

It all started when I was at a yard sale this summer. There it was. The most perfectly beastly sectional sofa you’ve ever laid eyes on. Orange-ish, brown-ish, rusty ugliness. And dirty. And horrible. Clearly a keeper.

I had been feeling that our life could use a sectional sofa. And here it was – cheap and nasty. It is at these moments that I glibly say to myself, “I’ll just reupholster it – that’ll be easy.”

Normally when I go to yard sales, Ben sends me out the door with a parting shot of, “Just don’t bring home any upholstery projects.” So even though I mentally re-upholster things at yard sales and thrift shops all the time, I dutifully don’t bring them home. Strangely though, this time Ben was with me at the yard sale – and he too spied the clear potential of this charmer.

$75 later, we were at home with a hideous rust colored sectional in the living room. The theory was that if I put it straight into the living room then I’d be more motivated to get it done quickly – what with having to look at it all the time. And yet, it’s been three months, and now I don’t have a hideous rust colored sectional in my living room – I have a hideous rust colored sectional with most of the cushions re-covered in ticking.

A couple of weeks ago I’d had enough of the rusty fanciness  and I finally dove in. I put myself on a schedule of one cushion per day – and since there are about a million cushions with zippers and miles of piping, I’m still not quite done. One more cushion to go. But this weekend I actually tackled the upholstery portion, and this is the situation now. My goal was to have this half done so that I could put the sofa back together and wait til next weekend for the other half. But since I frittered away most of my Saturday and didn’t start until about 4:00 in the afternoon, here I am on Sunday night, faced with the prospect of starting up my week with a sofa up on cinder blocks in my foyer. We’ll hope it’s not three more months before I get motivated again. Or I could just say that we’re going for the chic deconstructed look with our furniture.