Deal of the Week – SOLD!!!

Sorry it’s sold already.

Okay, it’s Deal of the Week time!

Today, once again, we have a deal that is primarily the work of what we call “a pair breaker”. We tend to buy in pairs because we feel strongly about, well, pairs. A pair of lamps, a pair of pillows, a pair of chairs. We advocate this practice to the point of obsession. I know, it’s a sickness, but we haven’t found a psychiatrist that will see all of us as a group – mainly because psychiatrists can recognize when there’s no hope.

I digress.

Anyway, this particular pair-breaker left us with a really great looking chair. Artfully designed, great neutral grey fabric upholstered onto an exposed frame of grey-washed wood. Now, those of you that know the term “form over function” will understand when I say this chair is a classic example of that theory. This is a chair made for its looks. I don’t mean it’s uncomfortable, I just mean comfort is not its purpose. It’s soft, it has a nice pitch. But mainly, it’s pretty. It’s a side chair, a guest chair, a fireside, a bedroom chair. This is not the chair you sit in to binge watch Breaking Bad. You don’t sit in it to read Moby Dick from start to finish. This is for short term sitting.

I say all of this with general warmth and love for this chair.

dimensions – 29″wide, 36″ deep, 37″ high

original price – $699     sale price – $250

Oh, and I guess I should review the rules :

1. First paying customer gets it. By phone or in person ( 817-332-1772 . Call. It’s best to call. Really.)
2. No holds. None. We just can’t.
3. No returns. We never want to see this thing again. ever.

Did I mention, it’s best to call??

SOLD! Day 3 – Black Wednesday A.K.A. Deal of the Week

Sorry, it’s sold.

And now for the grand finale of our Thanksgiving Deals-of-the-week. We are posting this one early in the day because we will be closing today at 3pm. However, this is a really good one, so I bet it won’t last a full minute before it sells.

This was a mistake. We like this frame – it’s simple, classic with a tight back (meaning no back cushion). We like a swivel glider. We like how comfortable it is. We like this fabric – this very white fabric. But herein lies the problem. This chair is upholstered. Upholstered – meaning not slipcovered.

White. Upholstered. Chair.

Don’t touch it, don’t breathe on it, don’t look at it. But please, for the love of God, buy it before we get it dirty.

Oh wait, there’s a smudge on the skirt already. Call now. Hurry.

dimensions – 29W, 35D, 34H

original price – 1690   sale price – 500

Oh, and I guess I should review the rules :

1. First paying customer gets it. By phone or in person ( 817-332-1772 . Call. It’s best to call. Really.)
2. No holds. None. We just can’t.
3. No returns. We never want to see this thing again. ever.

Did I mention, it’s best to call??

SOLD!!!! Black Monday A.K.A. Deal of the Week!

I don’t know if you are aware of our Thanksgiving hours, if not, you should know we have a strong aversion to “Black Friday”. We like to enjoy a quiet holiday weekend with friends and family…or more accurately eating cold thanksgiving leftovers  from a foil covered tupperware bowl while sitting on the sofa binge watching tv shows on netflix.  Because of this desire/need for a rest before the storm, we close our doors for the Thanksgiving holiday. We know that Friday is, for some, a tradition in it’s own right, one of markdowns, hoards of shoppers and fighting to the death over some electronic device. So if you go for the more roman-coliseum style holiday celebration, we won’t get in your way, but we won’t be open to witness it either.

Anyway, to make up for the fact that we are closing for the weekend, we have decided to have a Black Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday deal. So, in other words, we will be Deal-of-the-Weeking 3 times this week!

First up, a bench. We’ve decided to start with the most boring one. It’s leather – it’s the leather that you think of when someone says the word “leather”. It has dark wood legs, kinda post like, very simple – generic. Anyway we found out when you put plain legs and plain leather together you, not surprisingly, get a plain bench. Insert snore.

What saves it is the detail – a little texture to the leather, a little topstitching and nailhead (albeit, boring nailhead).

Dimensions – 54″W, 18″D, 18″ H

original price – 1290.00   sale price – 400.00

Oh, and I guess I should review the rules :

1. First paying customer gets it. By phone or in person ( 817-332-1772 . Call. It’s best to call. Really.)
2. No holds. None. We just can’t.
3. No returns. We never want to see this thing again. ever.

Did I mention, it’s best to call??

Deal of the Week! SOLD!!

Sorry, it sold already.

Deal of the Week. I bet you are wondering where it’s been. I promise that every week we discuss it. The trouble is we then promptly get distracted by something shiny and forget that it was ever brought up. And then before we know it it’s closing time. I’m telling you this so that you will be aware of our good intentions. Okay, i know, i know, “the road to hell… blah, blah, blah.”

Well, I’m here to make amends. We are finally doing a Deal of the Week. And I would promise that we will get back on track and do it every week from now on, but you and I both know that other saying “promises are like piecrusts, …blah, blah, blah.”

So here we go. This week we are offering up a console, a sofa table sort of a thing. It’s frame is a simple distressed gold finish – the top and low shelf are beveled antique mirror.

Why are we dumping it? Well, I’m not sure. We don’t hate it. It’s not in the way. It’s not a bad size. I really don’t know, but the fact is we want it out of here.

Okay, wait. There is one little thing. a tiny sliver of a chip on the corner of one of the mirrors. A pretty insignificant chip, almost unnoticeable. Here’s a close up shot :

Dimensions – 55w x 14d x 30h

original price – $999   sale price – $200

Deal of the Week – SOLD!

Sorry, it sold already.

Happy Friday! It’s deal-of-the-week time, and we have a great one today.

Sometimes we order something and it’s not that we don’t like it, or that it’s broken or anything, it’s just that, well, we didn’t do it right – we just didn’t do what we meant to do. That is the case today.  And so to get our mistake out of our site so it will stop mocking us, we have decided to offer it to our blog followers. The good thing is that although it was a mistake – it’s still a great looking chair. And a brand spanking new chair – it hasn’t been lurking around our showroom for months. Honestly, we would let it stay with us if it weren’t for that fact that swivel gliders are swivel-gliding all over our showroom right now. They are everywhere.

So this is the swivel glider version of one of our best-selling frames. It’s slipcovered in a cerulean blue fabric that has a subtle pattern – a kinda contemporary pattern. It’s trimmed in what’s called a flat welt that’s a solid blue. It’s a fresh looking cover on a classic english-arm frame.

dimensions –  W31 D41 H38

fabric and trim close-up:

original price –  $1890  sale price – $800

And here are the rules :

1. First paying customer gets it. By phone or in person ( 817-332-1772 . Call. It’s best to call. Really.)
2. No holds. None. We just can’t.
3. No returns. We never want to see this thing again. ever.

No warranty. No Christmas card.

Did I mention, it’s best to call??

A House is in the House

I want to tell you about our most recent endeavor. It’s been a year in the making. Like all great ideas, it started out as just an idea, a notion really. This idea evolved next into the stage of talking an idea to death–which, as you can imagine, is a stage which we excel at. The talking, which lasted no less than 8 months, consisted of many, many conversations. Did I say many? And then we googled and researched. Oh, and there were drawings, and more drawings. We pondered proportions and scale. We bickered and debated and probably ate a lot of snacks. All of this rigamarole was followed by a search for the materials. And finally the construction.

I know. You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? I was trying to build up some drama.

So the project was/is building a house/schoolhouse/chapel in the middle of our store. Yes, we have built a building in the middle of our building. Inside. A building inside a building! C’mon, this is cool. This is art.

Here’s what we were going for – Think abandoned house in the middle of a grassy field. Think country chapel. Think Little House on the Prairie meets the Dust Bowl meets…. something happier than the Dust Bowl. Classic America, flags, fresh grown tomatoes and apple pies, “amber waves of grain”. Okay, do you have that image? That’s what we wanted. Something like this….but not this:

It was our good friend Jamie made this idea a reality. He took our sad little drawing of Americana scribbled on a napkin and knocked it out of the park. If you’ve ever been in our store, you have touched his work…or rather, walked on his work. He laid down our old floors and then built the new ones that fill more than half the store (actually he was responsible for a lot of the new store). Anyway, obviously this guy is good. And he has the patience of a saint, which, I assure you, is required to work with us. He found the materials, interpreted the piles of napkins that our plans were drawn on and proceeded to build this thing in his yard. And then a few weeks later a house rolled up to our store on a trailer–can you imagine passing that on the highway?

The snapping together of this building was not a snap; it was sort of an ordeal… especially getting it through the back door.

We were very excited to see the first wall up. To see an idea take life is a feeling like no other, especially when it meets, no, exceeds your expectations. This feeling kept Van Gogh painting despite making no income and Dr Frankenstein stitching even though his monster was, well, becoming a monster. Okay, maybe that’s a bad example. I’m just saying, making stuff is fun.

Wanna see the whole process? Well, we are here to entertain you. Once again, we had a perfect opportunity to play with the time lapse feature on the phone. So, here’s the result–a pretty cool video of the idea that finally became a reality.

You know that feeling you have when something turns out to be exactly as wonderful as you hoped for? We are swimming in that. Come see it in person.

Semi-Annual We-Are-Bored-With-Stuff Sale

We bore easily. This is how these sales come about. Usually we start moving things around, but it’s the summer and just too hot and too much trouble, so we decided to sit down and start sending stuff to the chopping block. So here you go – our occisional-annual, but sometimes more often, We-Are-Bored-With-Stuff Sale. By the way, there are rules: no returns, no exchanges, no warranty. It’s yours–we never want to see it again.

First up–a “perfect chair” that we still find perfect. We had two, someone purchased one and ruined our fun. Stunning fabric in a non-washable linen ticking stripe, fantastic soft color, great hand, and most important–unbelievably comfortable (see “the perfect chair” post). Dimensions – 35″W 38″D 35″H

original price – $2190   sale price – $999

Here’s a pair of tables–side tables for a high arm sofa or perfect bedside tables. Why are they on the list? We have a lot of bedsides in stock right now, and honestly we are divided on whether we love them.  We thought they were priced too high anyway. We aren’t hating on them or anything, but this is called a Stuff-We-Are-Bored-With Sale. ‘Nuf said. Dimensions – 29″W 16 1/2″D 30″H

original price – $1290 each   sale price – $400 each 

This is one of our favorite benches of all time. We think they are perfect in every way. We love to upholster them in antique rugs. This one is covered in a vintage rag rug. The only bad thing about these benches? We have like 30 of them. Not really. We have 4 of them, and we don’t want to change our name to Benches-R-Us. So we threw one into this sale. Buy this one. You won’t regret it. 60″W 16″D 18″H

original price – $1490    sale price – $800

We love this cabinet. It’s curved with curved doors. BOOM. Perfect in every way…we did scratch it…a little. It’s pink–just barely pink.  A little tiny bit pink…in a good way. Great architecture, subtle carved detail, ball feet. It would make a nice small scale buffet, an entry piece, storage in a nursery, a media cabinet, endless possibilities. 48″W 22″D 36″H

original price – $2490   sale price – $600

Okay, now this one comes with a story. We won’t mention any names or anything, but due to a customer’s little space planning “pickle”, we have some extra leather chairs…4 to be exact.  These are leather swivel chairs, one of our favorite frames due to the graceful architecture and the high back. The leather is soft and supple (you know how I hate that word, but it’s accurate in this case). The color is difficult to name–some might say taupe, neutral light brownish, chalky, hint of moss, cloudy, grey-ish. The manufacturer calls it fennel–poetic,huh? Buy one, two, three, or go crazy and buy four….actually don’t buy three – promise me you will never buy three chairs. That’s bad juju, it has to be. 32″W 37″D 38″H.

original price – $3690    sale price – $999

Now we are going to have a run of items that are the result of what we refer to as pair-breakers. Each of these fine pieces were part of a pair–half of a pair actually, but someone came along and stole them away from their twin. You know who you are.

SOLD!!!! First up, a butterfly chair. Not a lot to say here – a classic mid century design inspired by British campaign furniture of the 1800’s. This one is a grey washed denim with leather reinforcements on the corners. These are surprisingly comfy, fun chairs. Great on a covered porch, in a kids’ room, an office, a dorm room or just a really cool extra chair in a living room. We are unloading this one because, as I said, it was a part of a pair that was broken, plus we recently got a leather one and you really can’t have too many butterfly chairs. Remember what started happening with the benches.

original price – $299  sale price – $100

SOLD!!! Another lonely twin – a planter. This is a really large container that is a reproduction of a formal planter that might have been used for a topiary or orange tree…think Provence, E.M. Forester, Versailles–of course they would have been used in pairs, but sadly this is not the fate of this planter. It’s beautiful. You need it. 25″W 25″D 30″H. It’s missing a non essential bolt thing.

original price – $699   sale price – $200

Here is a black bedside dresser…or stand alone dresser. Solid black, clean lines. You might even say modern lines. Very simple. The front has a slight curve that keeps it from being boring. 36″W 22″D 30″H

original price – $899   sale price – $500

Last up, we have decided to have a sale on our in-stock Dash and Albert rugs – this sale will not apply to anything special order. The rug rack is up by our counter, and we are just tired of looking at the same rolls of rugs day after day. We decided a sale is in order. So all the in stock Dash and Albert rugs are 50% off!!! There are several small cotton rugs, a few indoor/outdoor rugs and a few wool rugs. Big change a-comin’ in this department.

One more thing – We will only hold sale items for 24 hours.

Deal of the Week – SOLD!

Sorry, it sold already.

Last week the Deal of the Week was the result of a huge shift in the showroom. You see, we move one thing, do one project and it causes a domino effect. This particular domino effect was a week, no, a two week long event. And so, this week instead of chairs all over the place we found ourselves completely surrounded by ottomans. Ottomans of every shape and size. If you need an ottoman, we can set you up. Ottomans-R-Us.

So, I’m pretty sure you can guess what we are trying to pawn off on someone. That’s right folks! It’s unload-an-ottoman day here at Simple Things!

We looked around at the 30 or 40 ottomans (…not, really, but almost), and we settled on this big white slipcovered ottoman. It’s pretty big and pretty white. It’s slipcovered in a washable white denim. Really white. And the cool thing about this one is that the top cushion is separate and is filled with down! It’s a big squishy cushion. Now, back to the size – it’s generously sized. It could be used as a big ol’ coffee table, or as we have it here – a bench at the end of a bed. It would be great in a TV room or a playroom, or maybe a seat tucked under a window. What I’m saying – it’s versatile. So, just buy it already.

dimensions – 60″wide, 28″deep, 18″ high

Note :  These may be some of the worse photographs on our blog, but c’mon, you try and take a photo of a giant bright white box and make it look interesting. I assure you it has much more character in person.

original price – $1190   sale price – $300!!!!

And here are the rules :

1. First paying customer gets it. By phone or in person ( 817-332-1772 . Call. It’s best to call. Really.)
2. No holds. None. We just can’t.
3. No returns. We never want to see this thing again. ever.

Did I mention, it’s best to call??

Deal of the Week – SOLD!

Yikes! SOLD!! That was fast! 30 seconds fast!

Well, here we are again – Deal of the Week day! Wow! It’s gonna be hard to beat last week’s deal…..not really. There wasn’t one.

Today we are going to unload a chair. A leather chair. Is there anything wrong with this chair? No. Is this an unpleasant looking chair? An uncomfortable chair? No and No. It’s a great looking chair with a soft dark sueded-but-not-suede leather – a waxed nubuck kinda thing. Today’s deal falls into the category of We Don’t Know Where to Put This Thing. This breed of deal is one that often appears after a major showroom shift. There’s always an orphan chair or two that end up shoved into an awkward corner.

This is not your typical leather chair. It has a modern sorta look to it. It’s a small scale chair – great for a small space or for an office. What makes it special is it’s architecture. It has what we call an exposed frame – which means the wood is on the outside. Cool, huh?

dimensions – 30″ wide, 31″ deep, 34″ high

original price – $2690   sale price – $600

And here are the rules :

1. First paying customer gets it. By phone or in person ( 817-332-1772 . Call. It’s best to call. Really.)
2. No holds. None. We just can’t.
3. No returns. We never want to see this thing again. ever.

Did I mention, it’s best to call??