<$Friday, January 25, 2008$>
Furnishing my dream house
 I'm once again hypothetically shopping for my hypothetical future house. I know I really shouldn't, since it will only lead to temptation to get spendy after we move. Really, we plan to make the most of the furniture we've already got, and fill any gaps with Craigslist and thrift shop finds. I consider myself to be fairly creative, and once I get a sewing machine, between that and knitting and borrowed ingenuity from Curbly and other web sources, I'm pretty confident I'll be able to make our new house look like a cozy home without breaking the bank.One thing we do need to replace, though, is our bed. Our bed--actually, our entire fashion bed group, is a matching set of antique hand-me-ups that came to me only after a few years of rough treatment at the hands of my then teenage sister. It's all pretty battered, and not in that stylishly distressed way. I never use the vanity table, anyway, since when I'm not getting dressed at the gym I usually do so in the bathroom, and the chest-of-drawers isn't big enough for the two of us. Neither, really, is my full-size bed, with its broken foot board and aging mattress. So one thing I keep shopping around for to get an idea of how much money I need to save up is a quality bed. I figure once we get a new bed, we'll have it for at least a decade, so to me it's well worth it to shell out for something as sturdy and durable as it is comfortable. I really like the looks of these platform beds; right now they're on sale at prices that wouldn't kill us. It's doubtful that they still will be when we move, but we're not in a huge hurry. We can wait until they go on sale again, even if we have to sleep on our mattress on the floor for a while. Actually, a lot of the prices at Home and Bedroom look pretty reasonable. I'm going to have to bookmark this site for the future and remember to come back to it when we're ready to actually buy new furniture. Their Hillsdale Furniture collections include some gorgeous beds that I might consider if we decide to go with a more traditional look, and those prices aren't making me cringe, either. Once we get our 2007 taxes done, we'll finish our mortgage application and, hopefully, start shopping for a house. Our goal is to be in our own place by this summer. The thought of it is both scary and exhilarating, and despite the scary, I can't wait. This sort of web-window-shopping for good furniture and decorating bargains and dreaming about what I want my new home to look like helps me to wait patiently until it all become a reality. It can be agonizing to wait, but sometimes the best part of waiting is the anticipation and imagining what it will be like when the time finally comes. Labels: bargains, disclosure, frugality, house-hunt, shopping |
