A history of couches

I was checking out a post of Kelly's over at Love Well about her first couch, and realized after starting the world's longest comment that I may as well make it a blog post.

Our first couch
When we first got married, one of my husband's coworkers offered us a couch they had at their cabin. Free! We followed them up about an hour north to the cabin, and discovered the world's oldest couch. Literally a good 40 or 50 years old. We'd shown so much excitement over getting the couch. I don't think either of us wanted it once we saw it, but they'd gone so out of their way to help us out and we were grateful. So we loaded up the world's heaviest couch in their truck, and it nearly killed us to get it into our second floor apartment. It was the heaviest piece of furniture I'd ever seen, and scratchy. It wasn't particularly comfortable, but it was a couch. Beggars can't be choosers and all that. I covered it with some kind of makeshift slipcover, and it was ours for about a year. Then it was unceremoniously dumped on the curb when we moved out, nearly killing a few people again to get it out of the building.

The second couch
Our second couch came from a newspaper ad that I swiped at work before it ran. It was a rather beaten up couch/loveseat set, but it was really comfortable. It was covered in marker stains, but we didn't really care. When we brought it into our new apartment, we knocked out a light fixture. It was clear the couch wasn't going to make it through, so my dad hopped up on the end of the couch and just yanked that light right out of the ceiling.

When it was time to move that couch out to make room for a new hand-me-down living room set, we couldn't bear to try and get it through the door again. So my brother-in-law and his dad came over, and rigged up some kind of rope & pulley action. We took it out over the balcony. Of our third floor apartment. Probably giving a few of our elderly neighbors quite a scare.

Third couch
That's when we got a living room set from Captain America's godparents. They were moving to another state, so we drove a couple hours to the Twin Cities to liberate the furniture. We scored a couch, coffee table, two wing back chairs and lamps. They'd seen better days, but now we had a grown up living room SET! Matching furniture! And after many years of marriage and three couches, I think we'd spent a total of $75 on furniture. Win!

Today
Now we have a real couch. A couple of years ago we went to Slumberland and paid real money for one. Soon we will move into our new house (hey! I should pack!), and we will have a living room AND family room. So we'll be on the lookout again. For a kind coworker. A family member or friend with extra. Newspaper ads. Craigslist. Who knows.