Let’s have a little primal scream/group therapy session today and talk about our biggest furniture regrets. Is there an item in your house or apartment that makes you wince every time you enter the room? But you still can’t bear to put it out on the street? We’ve all been there, including certain decorators who should know WAY better. I’ll start:
1. Years ago I bought the *perfect* wing chair at the flea market-sure it already needed re-upholstery, but what potential! I paid for delivery (extra thanks to four flights of stairs), got it in the door, and almost burst into tears. Oh, it would look perfect … in my sister’s old dollhouse. This thing was Smurf-sized. Forget big and English and robust, he wimped out even next to my diminutive French repro sofa. I snarled at it for three months then donated to a friend, important scale lesson learned.
Or so I thought.
2. Fast forward to The Great eBay Mirrored Side Table Debacle of 2009. Sure, this pair of mirrored cubes is the perfect size for my shoebox bedroom! I can tell from the single photo with a white background sans context clues, no need to measure! Plus who needs drawers at the bedside? Not me. And it’ll fit in the back of my friend’s Toyota Camry no sweat-I mean, it’s only mirror, not heavy. IDIOT. I trekked out to the eBay warehouse in Brooklyn on the coldest day of the year to realize I’d basically purchased two shiny boulders. The rest of the story involves a man with a van but no cell phone, 150 EXTRA bucks, bloody fingers and a near death experience on my staircase. I curse them every night before I say my prayers, and would put them out on the street except I’d probably have to take a sledgehammer to the mirror first, which means 7 more years of bad luck.
WAAAAH!
Please, PLEASE tell me you can top this sob story and join me in the Hall of Decorating Shame. Sharing is caring, after all.
