So, this is a story about a chair. Actually a couple of chairs, but this story starts with one chair in particular. You see, several years ago we were expecting our first little baby and one weekend while visiting family, we heard that David's grandma was getting rid of one of her swivel rocker chairs. We were in the market for a chair for our nursery and so we tested it out. It was super comfy and even though it was a little old - it was f-r-e-e. I had big dreams of reupholstering it and having it be the perfect little chair for us and our baby.
We brought it home to our little apartment and set it up in the corner of the room. I wasn't up for a full on reupholstering project, but I found a pretty hand crocheted blanket/tablecloth and carefully arranged it over the top. I loved going into that little room after a long day of teaching and sitting in my chair and dreaming of my little girl. Several times David came home to find me snuggled up in that chair asleep, just waiting for him to finish work. It was a wonderful time in our lives and we were so excited.
Fast forward a couple of months and our baby girl had arrived. We absolutely adored her, but her preference for sleeping only when held made me realize that our chair had a few shortcomings. Having such a low back on a chair wasn't really conducive to sleeping (and I was spending most nights sleeping in that chair). The small squeak that was present before baby girl arrived was now magnified by my lack of sleep and constant rocking in the chair. No matter what I tried to cover the chair with, it always slid off/got lumpy and saggy, but the actual fabric of the chair was irritating to my skin. Each night I would vow that the following morning I was going to throw the thing in the dumpster and buy a brand new rocking chair. However, with the morning sunlight - much of my midnight frustration was forgotten and dismissed, only to return with a vengeance the following night.
I don't say this to complain, because I truly, truly, am grateful that we had that little chair. We didn't really have the budget to go buy a brand new rocking chair, and in all honesty - I would have bought one that wouldn't have met all of my needs, because at the time I didn't know exactly what I personally would want in a nursery chair. (Re: I was leaning towards buying a wooden glider from Target before getting this chair and I don't think I would have been very happy with it.) However, I think it's important to include - for historical purposes - how much I grew to dislike this chair. It squeaked, it hurt my neck, the blankets covering it were always falling down so that the top was itching my skin, it had a piece of metal coming out of one of the arms, etc... (Again, I don't mean to sound ungrateful - I just want to be honest.)
David repeatedly told me that I could just go buy a new chair - but I felt bad spending money on a new chair when I had one that was... functional. As Lydia got older, it became less of a problem because I wasn't sleeping in it as much, so even though I didn't love that it was covered with a big blue blanket - it was working for us. (I had finally found that the giant queen sized blanket was big enough to handle all the ups and downs without having to be adjusted every day.)
But then, when we started trying for Baby #2, I told myself that I would be buying a new chair - because under no circumstances (okay, under only the direst of circumstances) would I be willing to repeat my experience from Baby #1. I was going to find the perfect chair for my new baby's nursery. Unfortunately, our baby chair budget was still in line with buying a fairly inexpensive wooden glider from Target - and I knew that I wanted a chair that reclined so that I could sleep in it. As a great blessing, I ended up connecting with another mom who was looking for someone to babysit her 6 month old baby boy on Mondays. After much prayer and discussion, we decided that I would babysit Jackson - and that the money I earned from babysitting him would be "Nursery Money" specifically set aside for buying the perfect chair for our nursery. I really enjoyed babysitting Jackson and it was wonderful for Lydia to get some experience with a baby. Sometimes it was pretty exhausting though, and each time his mom came to pick him up - I'd smile, take a deep breath, pat myself on the back and say "$35 more for my nursery chair!"
Shortly after I started watching Jackson, we found out that we were expecting! We had figured out our budget for what we could spend on the perfect chair and the hunt was officially on!
Of the 24 comments, many people reaffirmed that looking for a lazy-boy type chair was the best way to go - but no one had any great leads, so we took to hitting up every furniture store that we could find. RC Willey, which has served us so well in the past, was a no-go, and we visited and nixed every "Baby store" like Babies R Us and Buy Buy Baby, because their chairs weren't comfortable enough. (Why wouldn't they sell nursery chairs with high backs that recline???) We wanted something cute, but were more worried about how comfortable the chair would be to nurse in and sleep in. We thought that maybe we were setting ourselves up for failure for looking for the perfect chair, because we couldn't find anything that was comfortable enough to be what we were looking for.
One Saturday, I was headed to a baby shower in Tooele. David knew that I wasn't particularly looking forward to driving out to Tooele by myself, so he volunteered to come and watch Lydia at the park while I was at the baby shower. It was so sweet and kind of him, and we decided to make a little day out of it. We found a couple of furniture stores online and decided to hit a couple of them up. We mostly did it as a laugh, like "We looked for this chair everywhere, we went to every furniture store within 60 miles - even out to Tooele!" And because we still hadn't decided exactly what we were looking for and we figured that it couldn't hurt to see what they had in stock. However, at Lilliards Furniture, we came across this chair that was really in-line with what we had been thinking. It was super poofy and when you reclined it - it just kind of cocooned you in. We talked to one of the salespeople about it, and saw that it was on sale for their Pre-Memorial Day Sale... marked down from $575 to $535. That was toward the high end of our budget, but we had definitely talked about the possibility of the perfect chair being a $600 chair. (That sounds absolutely insane to buy a chair for that much money, but I had been working hard and was really determined to find a chair that would be so perfect for the rest of our children and I didn't want to buy a chair that was half that price and then have to buy another one for our next baby because it still wasn't good enough.) We decided that we weren't sold on it, but that we would seriously calling back and ordering it if we didn't find anything else over Memorial Day.
We kept up the chair hunt over the weekend, and with every other chair we tried - we were more and more convinced that the chair in Tooele was the one for us. However, $535 - plus shipping to get it to us was pushing it pretty high. We also wanted to sit in it one more time before ordering it, but didn't particularly to drive back out there. We knew it was an Ashley brand chair, so when we went to Ashley Furniture in Draper we asked if they had the chair in stock - or if they would be able to order it in. After a half hour of dealing with a sub-par salesperson who was scanning through pictures of their thousands of chairs while referencing a blurry photo on my cell phone (no matter that we had the make and model number of the chair written down), it was determined that the chair didn't exist and they wouldn't be able to order it. Several other stores had similar stories. At this point we kept thinking "Seriously people, someone - please just sell us this chair! We had looked it up online, and verified that it was indeed an Ashley Chair and it did, in fact, exist: Brasher Mocha Rocker Recliner. But we were still hoping that we could find it at a local store where delivery wouldn't be so much money. Enter Knights Furniture in Lehi. Not only were they able to order it into their store - it was less expensive than at Liddiards and they would honor their Memorial Day discount on top of that. We ended up purchasing the chair for $375 (including tax)! We didn't get to sit in it again, but no other chair compared to that one - and so we decided just to take a leap of faith and order it.
Delivery was still about $40, so we opted to forgo delivery and figure out a way to pick it up ourselves when the time came. Shout out to Scott Cooper and the Cooper clan for helping us out when the time came by borrowing a truck from his job and helping us pick up the chair from Knights and bringing it to our house. It was such a blessing and we were SO excited to finally have our chair.
It's big. Bigger than we thought it would be. When it's fully reclined it takes up a good portion of the nursery room. Also, I think I might buy a nursing stool because my feet don't touch the ground when I'm sitting straight up all the way to the back (didn't realize that in the store). But we love it, oh- we love it so much! It's incredibly comfortable. The arms are cushy and high enough for nursing. The chair leans back and cuddles you in. I'm picturing lots of nights spent in that chair. I am already dreaming of holding my sweet boy while rocking him to sleep.
So when we finally got the perfect chair and moved it into the nursery, we were ready to celebrate getting rid of our orange chair - and then we realized that the orange chair was in Lydia's room and we had just gotten a chair for the nursery, leaving us with either no chair in Lydia's room or just keeping the orange chair there. Neither of those options was particularly appealing. Especially because we had just gotten Lydia a new toddler bed with some darling bedding and we really wanted to turn her room into a little more of a big-kid room with some actual decorations hung on the wall and such, so having a big blanket covered blob wasn't our favorite option. But we still sit in the chair to read books all the time, and she still wakes up in the night on occasion and it would be nice to have a place to sit with her. We talked about getting a wooden glider from Walmart/Target and then using the ottoman with our nursery chair, but then we scored a nice big upholstered ottoman for $20. As we thought more about it, we realized that we don't actually want/need a rocking chair in Lydia's room. We just wanted something that was comfortable enough to read books before bedtime with her.
Enter a massive KSL, Facebook Yard Sale, Online Retailer chair search.
I found several options that we liked, but then I saw a chair on a facebook yard sale site and fell head over heels in love. It was easily priced for half of what you would buy it for new and I just knew that it would be perfect for us. I contacted the seller, and even though there was some awkwardness (she acted like she really didn't want to sell it, but she had posted it and was giving me permission to come look at it, so I didn't know exactly how to act...), I went and looked at it the next day - determined it was perfect and then brought it home! (Luckily it came apart into pieces, because even though I often feel that I can move anything in the backseat of my car - there was no way this chair was going to fit.) Those pieces quickly transformed into a beautiful new chair and Lydia wasted no time in hopping up to read a book in her chair.
The moral of this extensive, chair-filled story is that we now have two new chairs in our lovely home that we absolutely adore. As a perfect ending to the story - one of my friends just moved from an apartment to a house and had been looking for a chair for her daughter. They didn't mind the orange color, and because they wouldn't be sleeping in the chair at night - the low back didn't bother them. They came and picked up the chair, and it makes me happy to know that it will be getting some more love from another little family. (David had talked about cutting it up and putting it in the garbage can over the course of several weeks, but even though I certainly didn't want to keep it - I'm sentimental enough that chopping it up wasn't something I wanted to do. It makes me so happy to know that someone else can use it.)
