Furniture shopping

I never imagined how challenging the furniture shopping would be.  But realize we had acquired our household of furniture over 17 years of marriage and at various times and places and rarely full-price.  I could wait until I found the perfect piece.  Not exactly so this time.  While we had received some money to replace furniture, we did not have unlimited funds.  I still wanted to be cautious with the pieces we selected.  They may never be replaced again.  What did I really want?  What did we really need?  How does furniture fit in this new house with very different bones than the last one?  The best summation of the process was the first day we spent looking for our main pieces of furniture.  We needed it all: master bed, two couches, chairs, desk, two tables/chairs, etc... And yet, even after 12+ hours at lots of different stores, we walked away with nothing.  Michael was frustrated at first but realized the importance of this process.  I think the hardest part was the shopping with kids.  We finally found one store that made that task enjoyable!  Gallery Furniture!  (albeit we only ended up getting the bed there).

Neither of us had ever been to GF despite hearing much of it through the years.  We went on Veteran's Day.  The experience started outside with the cages of parrots and cool statues.   The kids wanted to pose before we even got inside.

 (upon return visit to purchase the bed)

Then, inside the doors, we stopped to look at all the momentos given to Mattress Mac by presidents, dignitaries and others.  The kids headed straight for the huge tables loaded completely with candy.  We stopped to eat some fruit, cake, and BlueBell ice cream (in honor of Veterans).  Michael had to shake Mac's hand...

The kids then wanted to jump on the mattresses.  Cool!

We did take some time to look at all the massive amounts of furniture but in between we stopped to visit the themed restrooms, look at more parrots mid-store, sit in the same seat that the Dalai Lama had sat in, and pose on a chair that was 10 times the normal size.

The kids played in the two story (McDonald's style) play structure.  Mommy got eaten by the life-size bears.  The kids only stopped playing because they were hungry.

We went around the corner to the cafeteria in GF and had a really good lunch.  At checkout we were told that the meal was free.  Wow!

We picked up looking at furniture where we had left off.  This took us right by the monkey cage.  There were 2-3 capuchin monkeys in diapers in this cage.  Fun to watch their antics for a while.

After another hour of looking, we wound through another hall of memorabilia (check out these shoes I saw!) and back to the front of the store.  Kids wanted to pose by nutcracker.

Overall, despite no purchase that day (I went back two days later), we had a great experience!  And the salesmen were not pushy (no commission).  The furniture was overall nice quality and the delivery experience the best!  Would happily purchase from Mac again!