Make Couches from Lemonade

You ever get a silly idea that has no function but just makes you happy?  This is a story of one of those silly ideas.

Remember that time we mentioned how buying a couch sucks?  That’s because we spent most of the summer weighing pros and cons (and sales) before FINALLY picking a couch.   Here’s the couch we had, happy in the old apartment.

Not a bad looking couch, and when we bought it off another couple on Craigslist 5 years ago, it was in decent shape. But by now, the foam in the cushions was breaking down and it was a magnet for dust.  Every time you sat down dust poofed from the cushions, no matter how frequently we vacuumed it! Not unlike this chinchilla here.

It was time for a new couch.  But how to chose?  Where to shop?  We broke down some of that before.

We visited second-hand stores and scoured Craigslist to no avail.  Then we checked out The Magnolia Home collection because Chip & Joanna know what’s up.  We went to West Elm, Arhaus, Target, Value City, and of course, Ikea.  We loved what we saw in Arhaus especially, but didn’t love the price tags.  While someday dropping $3k on a couch we hope won’t be a big deal, but for now it just isn’t in the cards.  So we went back to our trusty Ikea and fell in love with this guy:

Well – OK, I already am in love with the fella on the couch, but the couch in question is the Ikea Kivik couch.  This one in the photo is the 4-seater, though we opted for the 3-seater, which is still surprisingly roomy.

So we listed our old couch for free, shoved it off our balcony (I wish that was a joke) and went to the store to buy our new fresh memory foam friend.

If you’ve never bought any large items at Ikea, you often have to see an associate to have them pick the items for you.  In Pittsburgh, there’s a whole second Ikea for the big things, so you put together the pick-list and they tell the warehouse team to pull it for you.

The trouble was, while they had the physical couch we ordered and paid for, they only had the cover for one half of the couch.

Sooooo, we had a couchless living-room for a week.  Oops!

Best laid plans, right?  So we were left waiting for the missing cover to arrive by mail, and sat on the floor while we waited.  We feared that assembling and using the partial couch could damage the under layers of foam and wrapping, making the final assembly difficult.

But I got fed up with waiting.  And these giant boxes reminded me of when we got a new stove when I was a kid, and got to color all over the box.

Draw all over the box…. AHA!  BOX COUCH!

It’s silly, but it was just the right way to put a smile on Bill’s face when he came home.  He caught me mid-illustration by the time he arrived…

I decided that some simple white paint would add nice depth to the illustration.  It seems though that Bill was pleased.  Especially with the inclusion of the couch Corgi.  (Silly as the drawing may be)

So sometimes it’s ok to make something silly that makes you happy – even if it isn’t some beautiful blog-worthy creation.  Hell, it’s blog worthy if you want it!

Now if only that drawing of a Couch Corgi was a real one.  Someday…

~ B&B