Apr 12, 2019 4 min read

If there ever were a prudent time to own a white sofa, it’s probably now.

One could reasonably argue that there is never a prudent time for white upholstered furniture unless, perhaps, the one who owns it has no children, grandchildren, pets, significant others or friends – but does have a live-in maid.

But there is a white, overstuffed, slipcovered sofa in our den; it sits at a right angle to an oversized, slipcovered chair – also white. The pieces were bought one cold February night, when I moseyed into Pottery Barn just before closing and started trying out all the sofas. Fifteen minutes later, I walked out with a receipt and a lighter wallet.

There was a plan for all of this. The farmer was closing in on completion of a redo of our den. When we bought the house, we declared the room a tacky eyesore and promised each other we’d improve it right away. Picture the basement game room of your neighbor’s house in 1972, and then add a station wagon-sized green sectional sofa with dog DNA all over it.

“I’m tired of looking at it,” said the farmer. Within a few hours he was showing me paint and hardwood floor samples. I told him to hold on while I checked Pinterest for some “urban farmhouse” decor ideas. In no time at all we’d decided on sky-blue walls and gray-brown bamboo floors.

We lived with the ugly sectional and an equally ugly red recliner stacked atop each other in our main living space while the farmer worked. I wasn’t so sure about the blue paint the first time I saw it, but by then he’d painted three of the four walls. No way would I be the one to change my mind.

There were tiffs along the way. I didn’t think the dark-red fireplace brick needed to be painted white, but the farmer did. Whatever annoyance I carried was quickly erased when I came home to find that the farmer had removed the extraneous door leading from the room to the deck and turned it into a perfect blue wall. The door served no purpose. Now, it was like it had never happened.

That’s part of the charm – and irritation – of buying a used house. Mysterious parts of the previous owners’ lives are built into the structure, leaving the new owner to wonder: What in the world were they thinking?

The day the bamboo floors were finished, I recognized our vision for the room. All we needed was the new furniture.

The new white sofa and chair arrived last week wrapped in plastic. It reminded me of my elderly aunts who kept their sofas encased in plastic. On summer visits, my bare legs would stick to the furniture like Band-Aids. I thought about leaving the plastic on my new furniture, or throwing a tarp over all of it and living like that until company comes.

As the deliverymen carried the pieces into place, I had my usual panicky buyer’s remorse. What was I thinking? These white things looked like icebergs flowing along a sea of blue.

“They’ll look better when they settle in,” said the farmer.

“They need pillows and some throws,” I said, hopeful.

The new law around here is that nobody sits on the furniture if they’ve been outside digging in the dirt – legislation passed mostly in honor of the farmer.

Who, by the way, enjoys relaxing in the new room. It’s his masterpiece; all I did was pick out the furniture – the bright, white furniture. Someday there will be grandchildren and maybe another dog or two, and maybe then I’ll regret my choice. But now’s not the time.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.