Furniture Shopping

I’ve been in my apartment for a month now and as of last week, the only furniture I had was a mattress, a closet, a chair, some borrowed camping chairs, and borrowed coffee table. My friends and I decided it was time to do a big furniture shopping trip. We drove to the big city to do so. I had been giving too much mental space (aka worrying myself to death) about what I should buy with the money I had and wondering if I had enough to buy what I deemed to be necessities. Once I realized my sinful worrying, I decided to pray. I told God that He is my provider and asked would he help me make quick decisions, find good finds, and make my money stretch beyond what I thought it could. 

We first stopped at the second hand furniture district of the city. My friend had found a guy previously who has a good eye for quality wooden furniture that Americans typically like. She said she hadn’t found anything worth looking at in any of the other shops and since our time was limited, we decided to only look at his shop. 

We, of course, began our shopping by sitting down and having a cup of tea. He had several options and served me a fruity tea that tasted like warmed grape juice. I could get used to that. Afterwards, we looked around the shop. He pulled out a table that he thought would suit our interest. It was round (or extended with the extra leaf, oval shaped) and had a square base in the center. Because of the design, it would allow 8 people to sit comfortable around the table. The chairs that came with the table were lovely as well. While we were discussing the table, I was eyeing two beautiful wooden cabinets with glass panels in the doors. I had wanted to buy a bookshelf and when I saw those, I knew they would make great bookshelves. Knowing bookshelves were not necessities, I dreaded to find out how much these beauties were. I asked my friend to ask but she said to wait until I knew what I wanted. In this country, you can bargain easier with the more items you buy. We sat down and had another cup of tea. This time, the owner insisted I try a cinnamon tea. It was too spicy for my liking. We got up again and I looked to see what else I may be interested in. While I was looking, my friend asked a ballpark figure for the table/chairs, the two beautiful bookshelves, the cost of adding wooden shelves to the cabinets and repairing scuffs and missing knobs/glass, and the cost of putting them on a truck to my city three hours away. The total at that point was equal to what I had budgeted for a cheap, laminate table and chair set. Talk about my money stretching! I then found two side chairs. He included reupholstering the chairs in the price. I picked out a fun aqua color for the chairs!

Once I had made my final decisions on what to buy from him, I realized I didn’t have enough of my country’s currency to pay him. He agreed to take dollars from me which was a relief since we were short on time anyway and didn’t want to have to go get money changed over and come back. My friend looked up the exchange rate on her phone and we all agreed it was a good number. 

From there we went to IKEA. It was a Sunday afternoon and in my country, Sunday is the day most people have off from work. They usually sleep in and don’t start milling about until the afternoon. We got to IKEA during Sunday afternoon rush hour. I have never seen so many people in a shopping place. I think I had to block out some portion of my brain to cope with the stress of that many people and the need to make a bunch of big decisions. 

I worked my way backwards through the store. I started in the corner with worn/damaged/discontinued items and found a desk there. From there I walked against the incessant flow of human traffic through the warehouse and then to the area where you can buy picture frames, towels, comforters, dishes, etc. After I got all of the small things, I realized I couldn’t get up to the showroom with my cart since the elevator was out of order. I had to weave my way back through the crowd of people to purchase my cart full of things so I could then go check out the showroom. Like I said, I did it all backwards. 

They didn’t have the bed I was wanting so I decided to hold off and get one in my city. As for the couches, I wanted to get 2, one that’s kinda squishy and would make a good napping couch, and 1 as a sleeper sofa for guests. When I was originally thinking about my living room, I envisioned dark gray couches and 2 red arm chairs. At the second hand shop I had made a spontaneous decision to go with aqua arm chairs. I still thought gray couches would go well with the aqua. The problem is that once I got to IKEA, I saw a beautiful green couch. I dismissed the idea since I’m a practical kind of girl and already had a plan for gray couches. When my friend commented on how much she liked the green couch, I decided to make another spontaneous decision and go for the green one. I love bright colors so why not have a bright living room? The sleeper sofa only had 3 color choices so I decided to go with gray for it since green wasn’t an option. The problem then was that the whole country was sold out of the gray ones and the couch had been discontinued. I went with the only available option of khaki. 

By the time we had the couch ordeal sorted out, it was 8:30pm. My friend’s husband suggested we stay the night rather than driving through middle of nowhere mountain passes. We decided he was right. We still managed to close the store down at 10pm and needed to return the following day.

Before going to IKEA the following morning, we returned to the second hand shop. The previous night, my friend realized she had used an incorrect exchange rate with him and I had overpaid by $100. He said he thought it seemed like a bit much too and wanted to make it right to me. We of course had to have another glass of tea together. While there, my friend asked if he would be willing to put my extra couch at IKEA on the same truck as his stuff. He said he didn’t mind and that he could drive his van there and pick it up and then drop it off at his shop and then load it on the truck once all my things were ready to be sent. He didn’t even ask for more money. IKEA was going to charge me about $250 just to send one couch. I gladly offered to give him the $100 back to handle the IKEA couch. I cracked up when he showed up at IKEA later driving a tiny station wagon with a roof rack. He said that he could fit 5 couches on the car and to just let him handle getting the couch, we had nothing to worry about. I cannot begin to tell you how kind this man was to me or how he bent over backwards to make sure I was happy. I am a stranger to him. He said his motto was to love the work you do and respect people. He does it well.

I’ll do another post once all my items arrive and are put together.