Tikkabik

With our interior painting efforts well underway, Bonnie and I have begun to research furniture. We're still a ways away from actually buying new furniture, but it's fun to shop around, as long as the kidlets aren't involved. They spend too much time hooting, hollering and jumping up and down on expensive sofas and in the vicinity of expensive and fragile objets d'art for Bonnie or me to be anything but on edge when they're with us. So today we pawned all three of them off on Grandma for a few hours and went to a few stores to see what we liked.

I expect that in the next six or eight months, our living room will go through a pretty significant transformation. Right now we're dealing with second-hand furniture we bought with the house that's basically falling apart. We've gone through two full sets of second-hand furniture since our kids were born, and I've had it with that route. So I'm prepared to spend money on stuff that I like, provided I can find everything I'm looking for.

Now, Bonnie and I disagree on one fundamental thing: What we should do with a center table. Bonnie wants a coffee table with drawers in which to store remotes and other things that would ordinarily get piled on the table; I want an ottoman that stores stuff inside. I don't really like or want tables. Bonnie's ready to concede this point to me, but it turns out that there's a real dearth of hideaway ottomans at present. Apparently they were trendy once but are no longer. Fashion, thou art a fickle mistress.

We've been to a few stores, but a leather place that was the second stop on our list was pretty much all I needed to see. Turns out this furniture maker from Norway called Ekornes has everything I'm looking for. Leather and wood, gorgeous Scandanavian design, and this really trick tray table that attaches to their recliner that I can use for a laptop computer. They have a three-panel sofa with three separate recliners built in. An a matching double ottoman that opens up inside for massive amounts of storage -- enough to stick James in, along with a table insert that lays over it. A total home run.

Now I just have to sell one of the children to afford it or become a drug dealer: It's about $5,200 for all the stuff that I'd like. Turns out that I have expensive taste, who knew? So, Bonnie and I are now looking for cheap knockoffs that might do the trick.