Elise and I spent all day shopping for deck furniture. We searched south Austin for manufacturer-direct locations with no luck. We did however witness a middle-aged woman on a pocket scooter tooling around the sidewalks. It was hilarious… I can’t put it into words, you had to have been there. Not but ten minutes later we saw a guy riding an old mountain bike while carrying a chainsaw. I kid you not. Man, this town is so awesome.
So we drove down 71 and stopped in at L&L Furniture to find patio furniture that was way out of our price range. Swivel rocker chairs were ~$500. We looked around the store and found our way out relatively quickly.
We drove down 620 and stopped in at Chair King. The prices were similar to L&L’s. Next we stopped at Sandy’s Burger Hut for two lousy, overcooked burgers. Then it was futher north up 620 and we drove by two other places that were similar in price range for furniture. We drove down 183 to 360 and stopped at the Container Store so I could get a desk drawer. No desk drawer. Nothing good from this outing thus far aside from crappy burgers.
We drove down 360 to Barton Creek Square to look for furniture at Sears. Nothing good there. Onto Garden Ridge. Nothing at the GR other than Christmas decorations. Remember, it’s August… time to start thinking about Christmas at Garden Ridge. Then to the ol’ HoPot on Brodie Ln. Nothing there. Then to Wal-Mart. We were exhausted and about ready to settle on anything at this point. Elise saw some wicker furniture that she thought she could settle on. I personally don’t like wicker. I decided that we would go back to the Chair King and pay a huge amount of money for deck furniture.
Back to the Chair King we go. Keep in mind we’ve circled the entire city of Austin in search of furniture – six hours have gone by and all we have are crappy hamburgers sitting in our stomachs. We’re at the point where we just want to buy something to make it a fruitful day out and be done with deck furniture shopping.
We get to Chair King and check everything out again. We look and look and look. I finally sit down at a display with a 72″x 42″ boat table with two high-back swivel rockers and four dining chairs. All have back and bottom cushions and they’re awesome. Price? $2,459. For patio furniture. There were some other set ups that were similar but these were, what we thought, the most comfortable. I spent a month building a deck so we could have fun with friends out in the backyard. I figured I’d make an investment in furniture as well.
We were both tired and done looking at patio furniture. I wanted to be done with this shopping outing. I have no problems spending money (luckily I married who I married) and was ready to spend $2,500 on stupid furniture that sits outside to get moldy and rot just so I could get home in time to watch Cops.
My wife said, “I’m not going to do what we did in Cabo. So, NO!”
I concurred. We walked away. I’m glad I listened to my wife.
We headed back down 620 and as a last ditch effort we stopped at the HoPot in Lakeway. We walked out to the garden section and found a display set of chairs and a rectangular table. This End of Summer sale was marked down 50%. The only problem was the set was missing one chair. So I had the HoPot kid go ask his manager if they could take $50 off the set since it was missing the one chair (yeah, me, Mr. Bargain Hunter who was about to drop $2,500 on patio furniture). The discount was approved contingent upon us taking the set tonight.
We loaded up the truck with a big, rectangular table and five fine rocker chairs for $200.