Two Brown Couches

If you have met my parents, especially my mom, you know that they do not make decorating decisions very easily.  I think we had 10 different paint colors on our garage all summer before they decided what color to paint our house.  When she goes out to buy a new doormat she will come home with ten and then decide to return them all.  Everything always ends up turning out great in the end, but I guess I am just a bit more impulsive and figure if it is really that bad you can always change it later.

The old "pretty room"

Our living room was once the “pretty room” in the house with yellow, floral couches that we only sat on when guests came to visit.  However, once my dad placed his ten guitars in there about five years ago, it quickly became the neighborhood boy hangout and the couches were quite out of place.  My parents finally decided it was time to find some couches that better fit the room so the week before I came to New York I started the process of going to a million furniture stores with my mom to see every couch available and let me tell you, it can get exhausting.

My parents finally decided on two nice brown couches, but of course it takes 6 weeks for them to ship and my mom starts to have buyer’s remorse.   In fact she sent the following to me:

“The brown couches get delivered this week, I hope I like them... I have been having serious doubts as every picture I like has light couches, none have brown, and then I read someone's blog post today titled: "Sofa Remorse: Living with a Dark Sofa".

She writes, “They sit in the heart of the home like two ominous, deadweight anchors. They mock me and my living room’s potential with their dead boring generic bachelor pad existence every day.  I see these "safe"  status quo, leather + nailhead trim couches with their dark, looming presence and I just want to yawn. The fact that we have a matching loveseat and sofa drags it down and dates it even more."

Yikes, I hope I can make practical look pretty!”

Well I felt like adding a sepia effect to the picture so I did.

As you can see, a bit dramatic and of course my dad saw this as the perfect opportunity to apply his witty humor and wrote a little song to the tune of “3 Blind Mice” in response to her worries.

“2 brown couch 2 brown couch. See how they bore. See how they bore. We all should have thought before we bought. They're now in the room, it's worse than we thought. Have you ever seen such a sight in your life as 2 brown couch?”

All the neighbor kids testing out the couches.

Well the couches came today and of course my mom sent me pictures of them from every angle and with the neighborhood kids sitting on them as well as a picture of the old couches.  I think they look great and will grow on her.  Plus, since she still has not moved the décor and paintings that matched the flower couches out, they of course will look a little out of place.  She is just afraid that the moment she removes something from the wall the boys will replace it with a flat screen T.V. and Jimmy Hendrix poster!  I told her not to worry and assured her I would help decorate once I returned from New York.