H and I have decided to upgrade our bed to a king-size. Currently, we have a queen bed, on a frame I bought fifteen years ago from West Elm. The frame itself is fake wood and horrible. Naturally, I couldn’t return it because it was so heavy. I haven’t bought anything from West Elm since! Anyway, it has kept our bed off the ground all these years, which is something. But it’s time for an upgrade. I remember sharing twin beds with boyfriends in college and thinking a double bed would be heaven, but I’ve grown spoiled in my old age, and our room is big enough.
First, anyone feel like sharing what kind of bed you have? Or what your bedroom looks like? Kind of a personal question, I know.
Second, I decided to allocate $5000 a year towards furniture and interior home upgrades. Basically, I set aside $100 a week and save it up. This encompasses big things like the bed and little things like clips to keep food closed, picture frames, a snow shovel, and so on. I like it because I always used to agonize on what to spend on things, and now with a budget, I don’t spend beyond the budget and don’t feel guilty about what I do spend.
Third, it seems odd and middle-aged to be saving up and spending thousands on a bed. (I figure 1K or so, all in, for the mattress and $1000-2000 for the bed, depending on what type I go for.) I mean, I could get a bed and mattress from Ikea for a few hundred. It just feels odd to spend thousands of dollars on furniture. It’s like an anchor that makes it hard to move, closes off that life of adventure I thought I’d have when I was young, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious I’m not going to have, by choice.
I’ll send you a picture of my very not-put-together bedroom when i get home.
We just upgraded to a King size bed ourselves. It does feel like heaven even up from the queen – we used to talk about it when we stayed in hotels and it was never a priority. We went to a TON of matress shops and settled on a mid-range one step below firm hybrid mattress from a local mattress shop – the Serta X5. (another thing I learned is the same mattress is sold under different names depending on the store, so you constantly have to google to see if you are actually seeing the same mattress or different ones as you shopped). It was also mid-range on the price spectrum (which is approx $1500). What I can tell you is that we were unimpressed by the options at Mattress Firm, however Macy’s also had a really good selection, the local shop was just ever so slightly cheaper price-wise for the same thing.
We’ve had to buy so much new furniture since moving, we decided to cheap out on the headboard and just got something from Wayfair for $200 and it worked out for now. Byron doesn’t want a footboard because he thinks he will bump into it at night, so we’re still in open debate over that until I buy something more expensive and have to commit to foot board or no. I am totally in love with these two frames from Crate and Barrel though and it looks like reasonably high quality wood:
https://www.crateandbarrel.com/furniture/keane-wenge-collection/
https://www.crateandbarrel.com/furniture/atwood-collection/ (with this one I love the footboard/bookshelf)
On the furniture purchasing the whole up and down of spending for us is really interesting. Our couches, oh I love my couches, didn’t fit up the stairs of our new town house. So, gone, so sad. So right now I am sitting on a $500 IKEA couch which is eventually destined for the loft when I get it together to buy a nicer couch. This weekend we bought a very very nice kitchen table, a lot more than I wanted to spend, but I am really happy with it. But Byron and I are still discussing dining chair options (the matching chairs are priced absurdly and I don’t like them that much, but Byron loves them, and I don’t understand why chairs are so expensive). We have a great patio and wanted to buy really nice patio furniture but gave in to just having something to sit on up there now that the weather is nice, and just bough a cheap set from amazon, I guess we’ll upgrade that in a year or two.
We have been pretty unimpressed with the whole Pottery Barn and West Elm universe of furniture. Lots of cheap veneers at very high prices that seem to scratch easily (literally we’ve been able to scratch them in store with minimal efforts). We keep going there and then rejecting things we thought we’d like. I mean, if I want something cheap, I’m going to buy from Wayfair.
Also my current furniture shopping annoyance is mid-century modern. Its a full-on trend that every single store has embraced the style whole heartedly – basically guaranteeing everything on trend is going to look dated in 10 years. And we’ve already embraced the gray trend in our new house, so that’s enough trendiness for me. I don’t really like the style – I like a few pieces, but I prefer legs to be more square and not have a point on the end of them. Really I much rather farmhouse or vintage than mid-century modern, if we’re going for an older style. Byron, on the other hand, has just learned that there can be a “style” for furniture and since mid-century modern is it right now, he doesn’t understand why that’s not all I want.. of course my style is whatever delights me. He is not impressed by my desire to buy these chairs from anthropologie:
https://www.anthropologie.com/shop/handcarved-menagerie-woodpecker-dining-chair
https://www.anthropologie.com/shop/handcarved-menagerie-owl-dining-chair?category=furniture-kitchen-dining-chairs&color=027
(there’s also a stag and a rabbit… and its not just the price he’s unimpressed with :)).
i left a long reply a bit earlier about our experience mattress shopping. did your comment system eat it?
anyway, we got the serta X5 just recently.
Becca – your comment got through, just had to be approved . For some reason, my comment SW thought you were suspicious.
We bought a king bed when we bought our house. Before that, we had a queen. When we’re at my parents house we share a double bed and honestly it is perhaps my least favorite thing about my parents house. I need my space when I sleep. 🙂
Our bed frame came from the local Rooms to Go and I’ve been happy enough with it. It’s a sleigh bed, and while my style has shifted enough that I probably wouldn’t buy this frame again if I were buying one now, I still like it well enough. We bought the matching nightstands and dresser and while it is all very matchy matchy, for whatever reason the bedroom is low on my furniture priority list.
What we really need right now is a new dining table (by which I mean breakfast room table, so its nominal footprint has to be somewhat small). I have spent a decent amount of time looking for a new table but haven’t found anything. Ideally it would be expandable to seat up to 8, which our current table is not. And ideally whatever the top is made of would be virtually indestructible.
Sarah, we just did an extensive search for tables too :).
Originally we wanted to buy this table from Pottery Barn, but discovered it basically scratches on touch:
https://www.potterybarn.com/products/benchwright-extending-dining-table-rustic-mahogany/?pkey=csquare-rectangular-tables&isx=0.0
Then we almost bought this table, but Byron felt the veneer looked too cheap, though I really liked the walnut color:
https://www.potterybarn.com/products/toscana-extending-dining-table-seadrift/?pkey=csquare-rectangular-tables&isx=0.0
Then, we wanted to buy this table, but Byron declared it too big at 86″, and I wanted smaller with extensions anyway, it was super sturdy:
https://www.potterybarn.com/products/griffin-metal-wood-slab-rectangular-fixed-wood-dining-table/?pkey=csquare-rectangular-tables&isx=0.0.7123
And we ended up buying this one, the 62″ version, which when we saw in the room decided was too small and are in the process of upgrading to 82″:
https://www.crateandbarrel.com/lakin-recycled-teak-extendable-dining-table/f69794
That said, if I had kids, I’d buy a $500 table from Wayfair, let them ruin it, and upgrade in 5 years.