nc trip report.

North Carolina wrapup: We drove 1000 miles in 3 days. My car needs some work, so we rented a car. The Hertz guy tried to give me a deal on a Jaguar but I said "no! I must have that phat Taurus!".

As far as SAVING BIG BUCKS ON FURNITURE!!!! goes... eh. We were about as successful as I expected. We spent the first day in High Point, at Furnitureland South. The place is ridiculously big, over a million square feet of showroom floor. A lot of people told us "if FLS doesn't have it, it doesn't exist". Those people are wrong. When it comes to modern design they have very little. Their "contemporary" floor has a few things, but also a lot of scary 80's-esque stuff. Great if you like bright colored plastic. Or chrome.

We did find a nice crib for The Chart, which I'm sure will mean a lot to him. We also stopped by 1502 Fabrics and SAVED BIG BUCKS!!!!1!! on fabric, which will recover some cool 70's chairs that Bradee's mom threw out. The fabric was on their remnants rack -- $6/yd as opposed to about $100/yd new. Here's Bradee posing as a chair so I can evaluate the fabric color:

The next day, we called around to other local places. Nobody was proud of their modern furniture selection. We gave up on High Point and drove another 90 minutes to check out Reflections in Hickory. Their thing is modern/contemporary. We bought a kitchen table. Reflections is in a "furniture mall" and everything else there is ugly or traditional or both. Here's what we were up against:

Sidebar: radio. We did lots of quality radio-knob-spinning in the interest of staying awake. We heard Linda Ronstadt, Debbie Boone, AC/DC, Willie Nelson, Judas Priest, Entombed(!). Nice.

On the way back, we stopped in Richmond to check out La Difference.

I expected La Diff to be a tiny place but it's huge. Three and a half floors of cool furniture, in a renovated dock warehouse. Here's Bradee enjoying the stylie:

After spending a zillion dollars in Richmond, we drove home to find our entire property covered -- literally -- with cicadas. Thousands of them.

So did we SAVE BIG BUCKS in NC? After you factor in gas, car rental, and hotel... no. We probably saved a handful of money -- on the fabric, if nothing else. Bargains or no, I still didn't enjoy shopping down there. Not enough selection for young, hip, style-concious fashion victims like you and me. (see this NY Times Article.) That lack of selection means there's not much competition for the stylish stuff. Our kitchen table cost $669 at Reflections. The same table was $699 at La Diff.