The Ugly $500 Chair

At my menopause lunch today, I was telling the girls this story and they thought it would be good for the blog.

Hubby owns 3 hair salons. One of the salons is over the basement of a very nice furniture store. Last year, one of our salon employees decided to clean. We don't know quite how this happened, but she started to run the water and forgot to turn it off. The water must've been flowing for a very long time, cause someone from the furniture store called and said their ceiling was leaking from our water flowing. And the water got on some of their furniture. Well, they were able to clean up the tables the water leaked on, but there was an upholstered chair that had water damage, and we would have to pay for it.

Hubby went to check out the chair, and yes, there was water damage, but what was really bad was that it was the ugliest chair he had ever seen. So he called and told me we had to buy, for $350 (the furniture store's cost) the ugliest chair he had ever seen. About a week later we set out in his vehicle, which normally can hold a lot, to go pick up the ugly chair. We got to the furniture store, and they brought up what I agreed was the ugliest chair I had ever seen. And it wouldn't fit in hubby's car. So we said we'd figure something out, and we left. We debated having the store deliver it, but of course there would be a charge, and the only thing worse than buying the ugliest chair on earth is paying a charge to have it delivered!

Well not long after that, someone at the furniture store realized this chair had an ottoman, and there was no way they were going to sell the ottoman without the chair. So they called to inform us that we also had to buy the $150 ottoman. They did agree, however, to have the chair and ottoman delivered at no charge (we think they felt sorry for us).

So the chair and ottoman were delivered, and put promptly in the basement. Hubby had cleaned out the basement a year ago so that my son and his friends would have a place to play video games and hang out. Of course the chair didn't match (this chair matches nothing in the world), but it was fine down there. It's actually a very comfortable (albeit hideous) chair.

Last week I was thumbing through my Beautiful Homes and Gardens magazine, and there, in the "after' picture, to my great shock, was the UGLY CHAIR! So we can now call the ugly chair a designer chair. And, well, it gave us a good story to tell.