Front Porch: When it comes to furniture, comfort always wins over style

What is it about the comfort of old furniture that makes it impossible to let go of it? And a parallel question – what has made it now impossible to justify the cost of repairing it?

We have a leather love seat recliner that became the delight of our lives when we bought it in 2009. It’s not so old as furniture years go, but as for occupied hours spent in this chair-of-our-dreams, it most certainly is. And it looks it.

After returning from a visit with friends and family 14 years ago in Florida 14, where everyone had some variation of recliner chair/love seat/couch entertainment-center heaven in their family rooms, a small love seat recliner struck me as the perfect solution for our problematic TV viewing in the small spot where one chair wasn’t enough and two wouldn’t fit.

With a left-handed lever for reclining (perfect for me) and a right-handed one for Bruce, we were set for individually placed lay-back distances and happily elevated feet as we read the paper or books, binge-watched TV, laid in while recovering from surgeries or (in Bruce’s case) finding just the right angle to sooth his aching back after strenuous work.

We lived in the darned thing, which now is discolored in places, has I-can’t-remove-them marks from Bruce’s boots and lumpy seats, which because we tended to lean to the left or the right, has crushed the padding at either end of the seats, leaving them high in the middle and low on the sides – or, more precisely put, cockeyed. You can’t sit in a normal position because you will slide to one side or the other.

And on top of that, on one side, the back has broken down and can no longer hold to a normal vertical. As we say in sailing, it lists to port.

We’ve moved a big roll-top desk out of the room, so there is now a place for different seating choices. I can no longer sit comfortably in my former favorite furniture, kind of a proprioception thing, so I’ve taken a single recliner, now positioned next to the beast, but far enough away to make hand-holding no longer easy or convenient. Bruce has moved to the left berth, so he can stay in the beloved love seat, but still be close(ish) to me.

I wanted to get him his own chair, but he won’t have it. The cushioning in the back is just perfect for his ailing spine, and the support under his legs is just right. The sloped seat doesn’t bother him. The love seat’s not going anywhere.

Always up for a compromise, I reached out to the store where we bought it. They no longer manage repair services locally, so they can’t just send out a truck with a guy and some padding to do the work on site. I had to contact the national customer services line. On my first call, I was on hold for 45 minutes. Fortunately, that day I was at my desk paying bills, so I just put the phone down and worked away until someone picked up.

Second call, similar wait. I had to give them some numbers from the furniture tag, and when it was determined that my model is no longer being made, I was informed they couldn’t help me. Much to say about that, but perhaps another time …

I tried a couple of local upholstery shops. My husband has a small business, so I understand the need to charge a fair rate and be paid appropriately for work done. But with taking the love seat in (or having it picked up), the cost of padding material and the cost of labor – not to mention rebuilding the loosened back frame – I really couldn’t justify the cost.

So I sit in my comfy newer chair with two arms to lean on and Bruce remains nearby in his own version of shabby furniture heaven, looking like he’s going to fall off the back end on the left (or appearing perhaps like what I envision an inebriated man all slouched askew in a chair might look like).

He is perfectly happy and doesn’t see what the fuss is about. Sigh.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net