Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Three sofas in one week... an adulting fail!

31 replies

WiddlinDiddlin · 21/10/2024 14:23

Please cheer me up by telling me your 'adulting fails', we could do with a giggle at Widdlin'Towers here, where it's all gone distinctly tits up on the sofa front.

If you're sitting comfortable (hopefully, because I certainly am not!) I'll begin!

Comfy places to sit are really important for me as I use a wheelchair with specialist seating, and the sofa is the only other place I can sit in the day. The bed is comfy, but its upstairs which is a hassle and I can only lie in it, not sit. I can only lie for about 6 hours, max. So having somewhere downstairs other than my own wheelchair to sit is really really important or I start to get pressure sores, trapped nerves, all sorts of woes and grief.

We had a second hand sofa, big hefty leather bastard bought for about £30 around 10 years ago.

DP had broken his side (webbing gone) with his backside and his insistance on flinging himself into it, and then sitting sprawled out shoving the leather (fixed) around - but he insisted it was still comfy, leave it be.

My side was fine, I sit with my legs out straight in front of me on a footstool, with an inflatable ROHO cushion under me due to card carrying wobbly cripple status, so despite being baby elephant level overweight, it was fine...

Until last Monday when, as I scooched forward to get off it, I heard a crack.

I dispatched DP to the second hand furniture shops forthwith, for an interim sofa, and set about looking for a Proper, Expensive, New... fantasy sofa of my dreams. I have saved for this moment... I knew exactly what I really wanted... but.. could I really... dare I?

I did dare. The company were happy to reinforce it for my extra-hefty derriere and DP's sofa wrecking bum of doom, so I ordered it, and DP found what he PROMISED was a comfy 'interim sofa' for the 4 to 6 week wait.

This arrived on the Wednesday and beloved knackered, comfy but threatening to die sofa was ejected from the house (in pieces, an angle grinder was used, RIP Sofa). Enter temporary sofa.

Guess what?

It isn't comfy. In fact it is made for midgets with arses of steel, it's one of the modern style chesterfield, exposed wood frame at the front, one piece leather pad with the seats defined by rods and foam... It is like sitting on a lump of concrete that shoves you (well, me, and himself anyway) into entirely the wrong position if you do not fit into the individual seat divisions accurately.

It is fucking agony.

So theres £100 down the pan and I sent him off on Saturday to find a better one, one he tested thoroughly with his backside (I can't go, none of these second hand shops are bloody well wheelchair accessible!)...

He found one, its vile, its brown, its fabric, but apparently it is comfy so I turn a blind eye to the fact this threadbare monstrosity is £125... and agree. Oh... but the shop can't even start sorting delivery on a Saturday, we have to call on Monday for that...

Monday morning, he finally gets through to the warehouse/delivery department.

For 18 stores through the local area, this charity shop have ONE VAN. ONE. JUST ONE FUCKING VAN.

It will be THURSDAY before we get the second temporary sofa. I may actually die. There is no possibility I am being even a tiny bit over dramatic here... none.

If I could hibernate til Thursday in my bed, I would... I can't believe that I have spent money on THREE sofas in a week and so far still have nothing comfortable to sit on!! I should have continued with the old comfy knackered bugger, carefully, until we found a suitable temporary one, I should have ordered a new one long before the old one broke... I am an absolute fucking idiot! (Mind you, so is he as he swore blind the first temp sofa was fine and didn't confess he hadn't actually sat in it until it arrived here!!)...

So please please tell me I am not the only person to have ballsed up the orchestration of household purchases like sofas, or other 'in theory' simple tasks?!

(NEW new sofa of wonder is an S W James Dudley, which I have sat on at a clients house and was wonderful... so fingers x they suddenly have a slack week and make it faster than the predicted time frame, which is already more than reasonable!).

OP posts:
Reginald123 · 22/10/2024 04:54

Could you post on the sofa making company social media site and see if you can get a sympathy vote to put your sofa allocation to the top of the queue ? Obviously not using your wheel chair user status as the sympathy vote reason but the large derrière?

You have my sympathies - I am long term crutch user and hobble from bed to chair so I hope the sofa company find your post as funny as I did and use your massive discomfort or derrière as a marketing tool.

Just one question as I can't sleep with my leg- has DH measured to check that the second temporary sofa will fit in the front door?!

WiddlinDiddlin · 22/10/2024 04:50

Third sofa is ordered and we await delivery 4 to 6 weeks hence... I realised after that part is a bit misleading but I have paid for all three sofas in the last 7 days... so I have bought three, I just haven't had all three.

Did contemplate a chair from upstairs (but theres the getting it down the stairs and himself now has a knackered back, and the other normal moving person still recovering from heart surgery and can't lift anything) and scrounging another from elsewhere, but it's a bit of an organisation nightmare.. as apparently is anything to do with sofas.

We only have room for one big sofa, no arm chairs, its a long narrow room, and I have to be able to navigate it with baby-elephant proportioned wheelchair.

DP does not think the current and soon to be ex temporary sofa is 'fine'.. he also hates it. He just wasn't allowed to sit on it to test it and omitted this detail prior to paying and arranging delivery. Because he is a twit. A now very sorry twit with a sore bum and hurty back.

Temporary sofa 2 HAS been sat on (I have the photographic and video evidence, he sat on it, lay on it, splooted on it, sprawled on it, until the shop staff refused to take any more pics of him on it in case he was some sort of mad sofa fetishist!)...

The latest is hopefully I shall foist uncomfy temp sofa 1 onto some poor hard up bugger possessing of a smaller backside than either of ours (free, I have no desire to fleece any unsuspecting sod for it!) as soon as temp sofa 2 arrives. I highly doubt that will go according to plan of course. Why would it.

I may retire from organising any large household purchases in future. I've just been reminded that I fucked up buying the wrong dishwasher in January (built in vs freestanding), and had to get that removed at the same time as the new one was delivered as there was no room in the house due to wheelchairs, dogs and builders and quite a lot of kitchen parts, some of which weren't even for my kitchen!

I'd like to return in the next life as a snail or a tortoise, carrying my home with me, not needing furniture or appliances of any kind!

OP posts:
thistlepiedpiper · 22/10/2024 04:40

I'd have given up and got yourself a chair or 1 seater something. You and your husband obviously have different views in comfort as he's thought they've all been fine but you haven't

Why put yourself through it again

Also, where's the 3rd sofa? I only read he's bought 2 (are you counting the old one?)

Nowthereistwo · 22/10/2024 04:38

Oh your poor bum.

Love how you described your dance of the sofas.

We're also waiting on new sofas to be delivered and only hope they are more comfy than this new (rock hard) mattress that is nothing like the store demo.

WiddlinDiddlin · 22/10/2024 04:08

Or indeed (thanks to MNHQ for moving this as I posted it in the wrong place, probably due to my sofa related stress)... AIBU to hate this fucking sofa and the people that invented it, made it, marketed it, sold it, bought it, sent it to the second hand shop... and anyone who ever thought it a good idea?

OP posts:
WiddlinDiddlin · 21/10/2024 16:03

And now the people bringing the 'new' (temp) sofa do not want the old (temp) sofa, apparently it is 'too old looking'.. and yet it looks a damn sight newer than the threadbare brown fabric thing we've bought off them (for twice the price of the leather one!)...

Honestly. Hibernating. Or having a sofa bonfire.

OP posts:
Swipe left for the next trending thread