RTTPYO #13: A Custom Reading Chair

nvilu7

Sep 10

6 min read

Woman shopping online for a green leather armchair — Finding a green leather chair was easy. Finding the right green leather chair was not.

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About the RTTPYO Series

RTTPYO stands for Removing Things That Piss You Off — the small home problems we tolerate for years before finally fixing them.

In this series, I tackle one everyday annoyance and show how a simple design change can make a space work better.

When I moved into my condo, I created a reading nook between the entry and the dining room in front of one of the condo’s oversized windows. I spent many quiet and happy hours there drinking coffee, my cat in my lap, sometimes looking out the window, but mostly reading.

My reading chair was a black leather armchair from IKEA purchased during my apartment-living days:

Siamese cat in a black leather chair — My original IKEA reading chair, before I decided its best days were behind it (Zoey disagreed).

My footstool was also from IKEA—a black-and-white cowhide pouf in perfect proportion to the chair.

Ten years into life in the condo, though, the chair padding began to disintegrate, the leather cracked, and my reading nook morphed into a place I wanted to avoid.

I began sitting on the sofa to read, but it wasn’t the same.

One day I stood, hands on hips, and really looked at the chair.

And realized that it was not only uncomfortable. It was ugly, too.

Time to RTTPYO my beloved-no-longer reading chair.

The Perfect Reading Chair

What did I want to replace my now-ugly-and-uncomfortable reading chair with?

First, I listed the things I liked about my current reading chair:

Shape: I loved my old chair’s lower profile and square shape and wanted a similar look.
Material: I liked the fact that the chair was leather and thus pretty much impervious to coffee spills, cookie crumbs, normal wear-and tear, and cat hair. I also liked its metal legs that contrasted nicely with the leather and added a bit of shine.
Comfort: Before the padding breakdown, I liked that the old chair was firm, but not too firm (Goldilocks would have considered it “just right.”).

Then I listed the things that would make my new reading chair better than my old one:

Scale: I wanted my new chair to be wider and deeper than the current chair, but in scale with the reading nook. My old chair measured 28” high, 28” wide, and 18” deep and was actually a bit small for the space. After fiddling with measurements, and using painter’s tape on the floor to block out the space, I found that I could go as large as 36” high, wide, and deep without the chair looking outlandishly large.
Color: I used black in smallish doses throughout the condo as a counterpoint to my bright color palette, but my current armchair was a bit too much full-on black. I had mitigated it with a large throw pillow that I threw on the floor when I sat down to read. After some thought, I decided that the perfect color for my new chair was Kermit-green to match the wall color in the great room. No more faffing around with throw pillows.

A few days later I started my online search for the perfect reading chair and found that the substantial leather armchairs that met my criteria were much spendier than the IKEA armchair I bought 10+ years earlier.

I was OK with that. I had cringed at the cost of my DWR sofa, but the thing wore like iron and looked the same as the day I bought it despite almost a decade of ownership and two moves.

I wanted similar performance from my reading chair.

After getting over the pricing hump, I hit a wall in my search.

I found dozens of chairs that fit all my criteria except one.

No one sold armchairs in Kermit-green leather.

I was annoyed but not surprised.

This was not to say that I couldn’t buy a Kermit-green chair. I could—if I was willing to settle

for a chair that fit my color criteria but nothing else on my list.

The exception to this rule was a pair of vintage Kermit-green leather midcentury armchairs on 1stDibs selling for $4K plus shipping. No, they would not break up the set. No, I didn’t want two chairs, although they were truly fabulous.

So I did what I usually do when my hopes and dreams are crushed. I slept on it.

For a week.

A Custom Reading Chair

I finally and reluctantly realized that if I wanted a new reading chair that fit all my criteria, I was going to have to get something custom-made.

What the hell, I thought. Let’s see what custom furniture is available on the internet.

After a bit of digging, I discovered that “custom” furniture comes in several flavors:

Made-to-order: already designed by the manufacturer but doesn’t get made until you order it. Options include upholstery, leather, wood or finish choices.
Customizable or semi-custom furniture: like made-to-order except that you generally have more options and more control over what you get.
Made-to-measure furniture: mostly confined to “hard” furniture (anything that’s not upholstered), where an existing furniture design is built to specific dimensions.
Fully bespoke: completely one-off furniture that costs big elephant dollars. You can get exactly what you want because it’s being built for you—and only you.

Most people consider custom furniture too fancy and too expensive for anyone who’s not making $47 million dollars per year.

That included me.

What I found out was that “custom furniture” didn't necessarily mean fully bespoke furniture—or a fully bespoke price. Basically, the further you get away from the normal manufacturing process, the more expensive that piece of furniture becomes.

Also, any furniture that’s not ready-to-ship is going to take more time to get to you because it has to be scheduled for production, manufactured, and upholstered before it can be shipped to you.

Encouraged by my findings, I looked at several semi-custom furniture websites to see if I could get a reading chair in a similar price range to chairs I loved but rejected because they didn’t come in Kermit-green leather.

I was willing to pay a little more to get what I wanted, but I didn’t want to sell my soul to the devil.

Semi-custom furniture manufacturers have optimized their manufacturing processes so they can provide tons of options for furniture that is damn close to your heart’s desire.

And, for a nominal fee, they will send you all the green leather samples you want.

I ordered samples of various types of Kermit-green leather from several companies. They began arriving ten days later. As they arrived, I matched the samples to the wall.

The winner was a perfect match. I excitedly went to the website and built my Kermit-green semi-custom reading chair.

Square, tuxedo-style—check.

Steel legs—check.

Semi-firm padding—check.

35” high, wide, and deep—check.

Did I want a tufted back? Why, yes. What a good idea.

Price?

Drum roll.

OMG. About the same price as a classic tuxedo-style leather chair I loved from Wayfair—which wasn’t available in any shade of green.

Only one disadvantage for me—wait time. It would take up to 12 weeks to manufacture and up to 12 weeks more to be delivered.

This company shipped its furniture using its own trucks and personnel. Once finished, my chair would enter a queue to be loaded on a shipment bound from the factory in North Carolina to homes on the West Coast.

I looked at the calendar. I looked at the chair. My chair.

Was I willing to wait for exactly what I wanted? Hell, yes.

I clicked the ‘Buy’ button.

The next day, I carried the old chair to the curb with a “FREE” sign. It was gone within a few hours.

17 Weeks Later

I got lucky.

My chair made it onto a shipment 4 weeks after it was completed. The trip from North Carolina took ten days as the truck delivered furniture in Arizona and California en route to Portland and then Seattle.

The company emailed me periodic updates as the truck made its way across the country. I pictured other customers getting their custom furniture and looked forward to the day when I would get my Kermit-green reading chair.

The morning my chair was due to be delivered I got a call from a cheerful customer service rep with my delivery timeframe. I seem to remember that I squealed with glee and the service rep giggled in response.

My chair delivery started with a knock on my door from a burly guy with a pronounced Southern drawl.

He and his fellow delivery guy brought the chair into my condo and unwrapped it—the chair that matched my living room walls perfectly.

The burly guy looked at my green walls and the green chair and said:

"Yep. Ah thank we're in the raght place."