hand me downs

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A Few Furniture Related Questions

We have come to the portion of Moving Into a New House where we are considering buying some new furniture. We have plenty of furniture, from the old house, but there are a few things that are missing from our collection. Plus, there are a few things that we’d prefer to replace because they just aren’t right for the current space.

The thing is, we have never really had to buy furniture before. We are deeply spoiled: most of the furniture in our house was handed down to us by my husband’s parents, who have moved several times over the years and who accompanied each move with gifts of furniture. Hand-me-downs from my in laws include two couches, two loveseats, an armchair, a kitchen table, The Piece, a desk, some filing cabinets, a baby grand piano, and lots of artwork. I know. We are very, very lucky.

This means that, aside from purchasing two bedroom sets and assorted furniture for our child, we have no experience buying furniture. But… buying furniture is kind of hard? And unpleasant? Like, how many couches do you have to sit on before you decide that THIS ONE is the right combination of firm and comfortable, that it is formal enough for the space, that it will fit in the room, that the quality is good, that the price is reasonable? And then you have to choose the fabric?! Yikes.

In an instance of great good fortune, my friend Jen (HI JEN) happened to send me a photo of her couch (it wasn’t really of her couch, it was of her beautiful and charming children), and I asked about it (because it looked comfy but also aesthetically pleasing) and she gave me the details. And THEN our local Macy’s had several of the very same couch IN STOCK. There was only one person working in the entire Macy’s so my husband and daughter and I were able to sit on all the different options and examine the different sectional combinations and look at all the fabric samples completely unbothered by salespeople or other customers. With Jen’s assurance that this couch is a good couch, and the evidence of our own sitting, we are now going to order this couch. SO. That’s one big thing to check off the list.

But we have other furniture needs and I don’t really know where to begin. You have Furniture Opinions, yes? Because I need your input please.

  • Where do you get lamps? We have looked at Target, and the lamps are… limited, and also a lot of them look kind of cheap. I am aware that Target does HAVE perfectly acceptable lamps; our old bedside table lamps were from Target, and they lasted a long time and I liked them just fine. We would not be looking for new beside table lamps had I not broken mine during the move. I have been suffering for my sins, lampless, since August. I looked at Crate and Barrel for lamps and it seems like you can’t get a lamp for less than $100, which is far more than I feel like I want to spend on a lamp. So maybe my question is not, “where do you get lamps?” but “where do you get nice, sturdy, aesthetically pleasing lamps that aren’t a million dollars?”
This lamp costs $350! $350!!!!!!
  • What is the deal with slipcovers? My husband and I had a hand-me-down loveseat in our bedroom for twelve years. Neither of us noticed until now that the loveseat is wearing a slipcover. The slipcover is not, as I would have assumed, covering anything; I would have thought you would have purchased a slipcover to conceal a fabric you no longer liked, for instance. But now that we KNOW, we feel like we might want to get a new slipcover. One that is more our style. That is as far as I’ve gone with this line of thinking because I don’t really know where to go next. And also, are we stuck with the skirt part?
Sheesh this is a terrible photo. And I couldn’t even straighten the cushions before taking the picture? YIKES. P.S. The side table is a hand-me-down and I hate it so much. I can’t even articulate why. I just HATE IT. But it has utility so I haven’t yet donated it. The lamp in this photo came from World Market, which no longer exists in our city.
  • Do you have a yoga mat you’d recommend? Does a yoga mat count as furniture? Let’s pretend it does for the sake of not wanting to revise the post title. One of my favorite parts of the new house is a dedicated room for exercise. But the flooring is Very Hard; my princessy bones have apparently grown accustomed to working out on a yoga mat on top of a plush carpet, and my tailbone and shoulder blades scream at me if I try to work out on a yoga mat on top of the floor. My solution was to get a nice thick yoga mat from Amazon. But, while the new mat is technically thicker than my old yoga mat, the material is much squishier, so it is not any more comfortable than what I already have. I tried to stack the yoga mats, one on top of each other, but they slide around. What I really want is a GIANT yoga mat that is also thick. Does such a thing exist? Rephrase: Does such a thing exist for under a million dollars?
Another terrible photo! And the floor is so dirty! Mainly because we had boxes filling this room until three days ago. But also because it is surprisingly difficult to clean this kind of flooring. Also, my husband and I discovered that the bottoms of his shoes, which are highlighter yellow, are shedding when he walks on the treadmill, leaving two yellowish tracks on the treadmill belt and a film of yellow dust on the floor. So weird.

Those are the most pressing furniture questions I have at the moment. Don’t even get me started on end tables. I think we’ll need at least one – maybe two – for the upstairs living room. We will also need couches and chairs and a rug for that space, but we’re living with our old hand-me-down couch and no rug for now. I don’t have the mental fortitude for ordering more than one couch at a time.

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The Piece

My husband and I were so fortunate that when we moved into our house, his parents were also in the process of moving. This meant that we “inherited” a bunch of their beautiful, no-way-could-we-afford-this furniture. 

Of the items they gave us, my favorites are the baby grand piano, the mid-century modern sideboard, and the tall, ornate curio cabinet that my mother-in-law refers to as The Piece. 

When NGS wrote about her grandmother-in-law’s curio cabinet, I knew I wanted to write about The Piece.

First of all, I don’t know exactly WHAT category of furniture The Piece falls into. I think it’s maybe a sideboard with hutch, but it also has elements of curio cabinet to it? I am pretty sure it’s not a credenza, but I don’t know that I’ve ever used the word credenza before so I wanted to. 

Secondly, The Piece has been in my mother-in-law’s family for generations. She said it used to live in her grandmother’s home. There is some confusion as to its provenance, though. Perhaps Mexico? Maybe Spain? 

I love it because it’s so unusual looking. Plus, it holds a TON of stuff. Currently, I’m using it to store most of my vases, some porcelain figurines that I inherited from my husband’s grandmother, some crystal that I inherited from my grandmother, and some other various odds and ends.

When my mother- and father-in-law delivered The Piece to us, they were very apologetic because the shelves were missing. “We know it had shelves at one point,” they said. “But they must have been lost during the move.” 

It was charmingly amusing to find the shelves while I was cleaning The Piece. They were simply on the bottom of the opaque-doored area, stacked in such a way that they appeared to be part of the cabinet’s floor.

Because none of us are immune from missing highly obvious things: There is an electric component, which I did not know about until we’d owned The Piece for five or six years. There’s a light in the top portion and you can turn it on and off to showcase your crystal and vases and porcelain birds. 

I love that The Piece is ours, now. Maybe someday Carla will want it in her home, or, if it’s not her style, maybe my niece will cherish it. Having something that’s been in the family for so long feels so precious to me, for reasons I can’t fully articulate.

Do you have any unique or hand-me-down pieces of furniture? Any family “heirlooms” that have been passed around?