Just moved to a new house with a second reception room which we have used as a dining room. But given we don’t spend that much of the day eating, and it’s very spacey, I’m turning into a dining room-come-reading corner for me. I’ve put my bookshelf in there, ordered a mini fridge and tall reading lamp and now all I need is a sofa.
Because even bland sofas these days cost almost the same as my mum’s first house did - and the wait to get the bloody thing is around 6 weeks (which from experience turns into 8-9 weeks) - I thought I’d be environmentally conscious as well as thrifty and buy second hand.
Local second hand furniture shops are no good - the nansecond they get a sofa in someone else with more sore time to shop than me snags it. I swear people camp outside these shops to get first dibs on anything that doesn’t look like it came from the 1970’s.
So I went on FB marketplace. I search for sofas within a 10km radius of my postcode.
Every single sofa looks lovely, is priced reasonable from £50-£150 and then when I enquire it turns out it was a falsely advertised price and some sort of sofa loan shark is touting their wares on Facebook. They seem to be operating in a group of about 500 others, and it’s impossible to spot if someone is actually selling a second hand sofa or is wanting £600 “cash on delivery” for a sofa that probably ‘fell off the back of a van’. It’s only when they reply to my initial enquiry with lots of emojis and BIG CAPITAL LETTER WORDS ABOUT HOW THIS SOFA WILL CHANGE MY LIFE that I realise it’s not a £50 sofa after all.
It’s really pissing me off, I just want a 2 seater or a love seat so I can hide from the bastards wonderful people I live with to read in peace on an evening. Why is it so hard to find something to sit on!