Sofa Is Under Construction In Wisconsin

By Dan Rattiner

One month ago, my family and I decided that we ought to get a new sofa for our house. It wasn't that we didn't have a sofa. It was just that the old sofa from which you watch TV was in the living room and we had made a decision to move the TV out of the living room into what had been a spare bedroom on the ground floor so we could have a peaceful and quiet living room where we could talk and read. The spare bedroom would be a TV room.

Well, in the old days, we'd go out to Hildreth's in Southampton, sit on a few sofas, decide which one was the most comfortable and buy it. The next day, two workmen would arrive in a big truck and, accompanied by grunting and groaning, bring it inside. We'd tip them.

That's how you bought a sofa in most of America then. And it's still how you buy a sofa in most of America these days. But it is no longer how you buy a sofa in the Hamptons. Now, it's a whole big deal. And it's a big deal because the house you are putting it in, which could well be the same house you owned twenty years ago, is now worth three million dollars. Twenty years ago, it was worth maybe two hundred thousand dollars. This is a big difference. And you aren't going to put a piddly little "I'll take that one" sofa in a three million dollar house. No sir.

Well, it kind of caught me by surprise, all this. Maybe it's because I hadn't bought a new sofa in twenty years, or maybe I did but forgot about it. In any case, here's what happened.

In anticipation of the arrival of the new sofa in this former bedroom, we took out all the old furniture, tore up the wall-to-wall carpeting, stained the old wooden floor, took down the wallpaper and painted the walls something called Pirate's Cove Beach beige. Then we got the TV people in, moved the TV in there and wired it up. Then, we went out to get the sofa. We'd be all curled up in there by morning.

Hildreth's hasn't changed in twenty years. In fact, Hildreth's hasn't changed in 165 years. It's the oldest department store in America. And I figured I'd go about getting the sofa there just as I'd done before. We went inside and immediately started looking around for something that might be compatible with a Pirate's Cove Beach. I found a sofa and sat on it. I found another sofa and sat on that. And then I consulted and we said we'll take it. But that wasn't good enough.

"You have to decide on a fabric," said our salesperson.

So we decided on a fabric. Or we decided on three fabrics, three semifinal fabrics that would compete to see which one would be our final fabric. They all looked good. And as it turned out, our salesperson was actually an interior designer named Kristen. She is one of several interior designers working full time at Hildreths and she said that before she would give us any advice about which one was to be the winner, she would like to see the room into which we intended to put it. We checked our calendar. We could see her the following Monday at ten a.m.

That night, we came home and sat on the wooden floor in the empty room and watched the TV.

Four days later, we had some scattered pillows and a few blankets on the floor and she came over and checked it all out and said that one of the three fabrics - she had brought all three with her - would be just perfect. The other two? Not so perfect. We said we'd take the perfect one.

Now, the situation was that we would have to have the sofa built. She called back later in the day and said she thought we should have a slightly different model of this sofa instead of the one we had thought we should get because the dimensions of the room would be better with the one she had in mind.

"Stop in and have a look," she said.

The next day, we stopped in and did look and the suggestion was just fine. And the fabric was just fine. And we said, "we'll take it."

The next day, she called and said the order was all ready to sign and could she fax it over. We said sure. She faxed. We signed the order and returned it. Then we went back to watching "Seinfeld" from the throw pillows. The sofa would be coming soon.

Three days later, I called to see how the order was going and she said it was all ready and she would need a deposit of one third down. I said okay and wrote her a check, a copy of which I faxed over to her. The original I put into the mail. Then we watched a movie.

The next day, we briefly considered moving the existing sofa from the living room to the new den. But in the end, we left it where it was.

"I LIKE having a sofa in the living room where there's no TV," I said.

The next day, I learned that our sofa would be made somewhere in a factory in northern Wisconsin. We could expect it in four to six weeks. It made me wonder if it might be possible for us to rent a sofa until the new one arrived. Then I thought probably not. Not with three dogs running around our house.

I have to say, I cannot blame any of this on Hildreth's. We could have easily gone in and just bought a sofa right off the floor. But now that we have a three-million-dollar house, well, you just don't do that. You have to get A SOFA. And so Hildreths, traditional but changing with the times, was going to oblige.

So, the sofa will be here in four weeks. I imagine that in another two weeks, they'll be putting the final touches on it up there in northern Wisconsin and making the call to the trucking company.

And pretty soon, perhaps sometime in late September, we should be planning a big party to celebrate the arrival of The Sofa. The workmen will not be bringing their truck up the gravel driveway to the side of the house outside the mudroom, where they can rap on the front door with their knuckles. They will be bringing it up the paved driveway to the cutsie picket fence, where they will carefully carry it across the clipped lawn with the sprinkler system and the lighting system and past all the roses and gladiolas lining our Pirate's Cove Beige stone walkway to our Martha Stewart vestibule entryway. They will ring the bell. Ding a ling. And we will answer it. A cheer will ring out. The Sofa!

Meanwhile, I should tell you that we are no dopes. We have long since moved three kitchen chairs into what will be our den someday later this Century and are therefore no longer sitting on the floor. Kitchen chairs are not the same as having a sofa in there, of course. And the dogs don't get it. But what the hell, it's the Hamptons. And sometimes, you just have to make sacrifices.

Back to Contents