Furniture Shopping - Madness.

Can you say stressful?

It probably wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't decided to put BLACK in the living room. It's so hard to find. Everything is wood. or espresso. or cappuccino. or dark cherry. or some other variation of the color brown. And even some black pieces are considered distressed black. with a brush of espresso. No thanks. I dont understand why Best Buy sells so many black tv stands when the market is so saturated with non-coordinating items! And then when you actually DO find other black pieces that look half way decent like they arent made of cheap flimsy material... you can only purchase these items online, and not actually see them in person. Another big no thanks. It's really frustrating.

I'll have to take pictures of our living room before and after once we actually remove the current tables, but...

Last weekend we went to Ashley Furniture in hopes we'd find some new coffee/end tables. Our entire bedroom is an Ashley collection, but it was purchased at Hilton. Anyway...my husband is picky. Picky picky picky. And while we do have similar tastes, he has more distinct preferences, and voices them. loudly. However, we found a set we agreed on (we didnt JUST go to Ashley...). Here's the set we picked...tho the color says dark bronze, it actually did look black in the store.

So we bought it. It would've given the living room some nice touches of color with those dark tiles. It's in stock at the warehouse. Where's the warehouse? Sugarland. Could we go pick it up? Yes. Off we went. We get there in the pouring rain, and one of the guys comes up to me and says that their computer systems are down. So just kinda looked at him and said...well what does that mean exactly? Are you telling me I can't pick up my furniture that I just drove all the way over here for? And he said basically, ya. So we were a little angry. I said, I dont care, just go pull our stuff, input the data when the computers come back on or whatever, just give me my stuff. All he was gonna do was keep a signed copy of the piece of paper I already had anyway I'm sure. Computers back on 5 minutes later and they go to pull our tables. 15 minutes later they come back and they can't find them. They don't have them in stock. I. was. livid. It's not like these are pens or shampoo they had to keep track of...these were large items. How do you screw that up. We call the store, because the warehouse won't, and immediately get the manager on the phone, who offers free delivery...on Thursday. Wasn't gonna work. We said how 'bout Friday? And of course he couldn't give us a time...that's....semi-normal. Yesterday Justin gets a call saying they still don't have these tables in. And deliver would have to wait. We ask for a refund. They said it's gonna be 4-5 days. Ok, so they take the money out the same day, but can't give it back to us as quickly because they have to fill out numerous forms. What a joke. Justin called and disputed the original charge with the bank and told them what happened...We had the money back within 24 hrs....   and have continued shopping since.

I spent all day Thursday shopping for furniture online. I had so many bookmarks to get home and show Justin, most of which he vetoed immediately. There's 4 table sets on the list of possibilities. Only one of which is in a showroom...in Beaumont! And another one, sold at 2 stores locally, which may or may not be a showroom. And the other 2 are online only (ick). I'll check back in when we pick one and show you all of them.

Don't get me started on black shelving/book cases. It's not even worth talking about until we actually buy some. Which may be never, because it's all online only too. Good grief...