I thought I didn't like Red.

When we first moved here - we moved with Josey, packed full, and nothing else. I spent about $300 the first two weeks to outfit the house (from thrift stores, garage sales, used and antique furniture stores, etc) and have probably spent $150 more since then, on furniture for the entire house. Part of that first $300 was for a futon. I'd never really experienced a futon before - but it seemed like a good idea... it wasn't. We pulled off the mattress and used it on the floor as a bed until we finally bought a real mattress not long after. The entire set up was just too cumbersome to deal with, with the mattress on it - moving it up and down all the time.

Before that, when we had set up Josey as our house, we had two main issues to deal with - one was how to fit D's large bouldering crash pad into the car, the other was what to use on the plywood bed we'd built into the back, to make it sleepable. Luckily - his crash pad fit perfectly over 2/3rds of the bed. So we cut some crash pad foam from an old pad down to fit the remaining 1/3rd and all was good.

After I pulled the futon mattress off the frame, I discovered the cut down 1/3rd chunk of crash pad foam was just the right size to fit on the futon when it was in it's upright position - so I threw an afghan over it all, added some big pillows and called it a couch.

In the time since then we've debated getting a real couch. Often. The main issues being - furniture doesn't top our priority list for large expenditures - it will end up being moved shortly - and it has to get up one flight of stairs, as our place is built into a hill with the garage and storage space downstairs and everything else Up. Plus any couch that I'd like enough to spend the money to buy new would be above our current price range... I'm not spending $400 on some god-awful number from the local furniture warehouse... I can wait for what I want.

Recently D was expressing a renewed desire for a couch. So I'd been keeping my eye out for something suitable. The other night, I left for work a bit early so I could drop D off at a trailhead, from which he rode home. Which landed me in the main part of town about 15 minutes before I had to be at work... and about 10 blocks from the best thrift store for furniture I've yet to find in the state.

I looked around for a bit and while I saw many interesting and promising pieces of furniture, none of them were couches. Then - as I was leaving, behind a big desk sitting outside, a bit of red attracted my attention... hiding, one stacked upside down on top of the other - were these two matching love seats. Couch and love seat sets are common - but how often do you find two matching love seats??? As my business has thoroughly attacked the main room of our house, we don't have a ton of extra space - but we most definitely have room for two love seats... so I talked to the woman who runs the place - as the bed was in Josey and I had to be at work shortly, I didn't have any way to take them right then and there and they were closing up for the day... so after discussing various options, she said if I was back there first thing in the morning to take them away I could have them both for $10. How absurd!!!

D agreed to help me take the bed out of the back of the truck at 6:15 in the morning, so I could take him to work and then go pick up the couches - of course this was after I woke him up at 11pm when I got home from work and tried to talk to him while he was half-asleep and fully-disgruntled... note to self - do not wake people up to ask for favors - wait till the morning!!!

They both - ever so barely - fit in the back of the truck... ever so barely... I almost agreed to make two trips till the guy helping me at the store convinced me it would work - and we know how I feel about making two trips for anything - matching love seats included.

Then when I got home I couldn't help but want to bring them in - up the flight of stairs - all by myself - and get them into a natural position so D could immediately see what a good idea it all was when he got home (even the waking up in the middle of the night part).

Suffice to say, they want to be reupholstered - but at the moment they go perfectly with the coffee table we painted red way back, a year and a half ago.

And they'll look a bit better when there aren't the green and white pillows and afghan that were on the previous "couch"... but they amuse me to no end - and that's what's important.

(The little green table in the back is a side table that matches the red coffee table but was painted differently - the four little drawers you can see on the front of the red table hold our folded maps - we have an Arizona Drawer, Utah Drawer, California Drawer and Eastern Drawer which has various maps mainly from Colorado but also North Dakota (Maah Daah Hay trail) and other assorted places - and now we have the perfect place for multiple people to sit around pouring over those maps.)