So a few years back, maybe it was somewhere around 2003-2004, I ordered this bookcase through a catalog. I'd bought other small pieces of furniture through this particular catalog and had been very happy.
But this was supposed to be one of those barrister type bookcases and although it looked good, it really couldn't be used or even touched much. Rather than one solid piece of furniture, it was pieces, all supposedly securely attached to each other.
My movers, the last time I moved, did an amazing thing transporting it, they wound all kinds of those elastic straps around it and plastic-wrapped it all up and it made it to the new house. I was shocked, I was sure it would be trash.
Finally I ordered a real bookcase to replace it and it came the other day. This one is nice and solid, although the back of it and the top appear to not be wood, but that flimsy stuff you always find at the back of furniture nowadays. What's so hard about finding a piece of solid wood furniture? That doesn't cost like $10000 of course...that must be the hard part, huh?
I could get on a tirade about now on how cheaply everything is made, like the desk that this computer is sitting on right now...I keep the monitor to one side because I'm afraid the middle will bow if I keep it in the middle....and how the sides are cracked because they are even real wood, but the fake stuff. And it wasn't cheap either!!!
I'm thinking that from now on I should only buy furniture from estate sales or antique stores because at least it would be solidly made. You young whipper-snappers today don't know how to make things that last more than 5 years.
Of course there is the slight problem in that I really don't need any more furniture in my house, soon it will start looking like a flea market stall if I don't reign myself in. Might be time for a nice clean-out.
Oh wait, I do need a bed for the loft so it can be a guest bedroom as well...whew, I thought I was in trouble there for a moment...and I will need a desk chair soon, the one I am sitting on now I've had for about 10 years. It's one of those cheap cloth covered one's from Office Depot or Staples, and I bought it when I was in my pine-pier-one phase, so it totally doesn't match anything I have anymore. I hate to give it up though because my one cat LOVES it, and when I say LOVES it, I mean she likes to use her claws to climb up the back of it and perch on one of the little arm rests while I'm working here. And the fabric is some sort of magic anti-cat-claw fabric that they would never make a sofa out of, no, never, so it doesn't look like anythings wrong with it. How is that possible? And that's why I hate to give it up. But the one arm rest is totally broken now and sticks up at a 45 degree angle (making it difficult to perch upon) and it makes scary I'm-just-about-ready-to-collapse noises when I lean back to thoughfully ponder some bon mot I'm about to dazzle the world or my co-workers with....
Anyway, here are the before and after pics of the bookcase, plus one of the chair before I sat it in so much it wore out (like from about 8 years ago):
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