So today I had the joy of flipping a really cool MCM sofa that I bought in the early summer for $400. I sold it today for $795 and it reminded me how much $$ a person with a good eye (and a van) could make just looking for remarkably under-priced items on Craigslist.

Before I officially say goodbye to the marvelous piece, I want to say how freaking cool it was. You could take it apart like tinker toys and flip the backs so two sections faced north and two sections faced south. The original owners were selling it with grey Knoll cushions they had made and they just 'happened" to have the original cushions in the basement. Of course I went nuts for the original cushions, but I was worried about sticky kids around them. Frankly the couch was 100" long and it wasn't super comfortable to fall asleep on while watching Weeds in the middle of the night either. In reality it wasn't too hard to part with today.

So my next fun dilemma is getting a new couch for my office/extra TV room. I am all about shopping local, but I if I don't find a couch on Craigslist, it is unlikely that a local vendor that has a couch for me in the $400 range. I did see this cool sofa- bed at Shag in Hollywood but it is too expensive right now.

Mid-Century Sofa - Pistachio, $480I have been really interetsed in this $480 MCM rip-off sofa from Urban Outfitters but I also feel like a complete douchebag buying anything from Urban Outfitters. Their buyers are notoriously unscrupulous. At gift shows, vendors that I know from my buying days say they literrally close down their booths when they see them coming down the isle. Urban bargains down their vendors till they cry and barely make a profit, or they just rip-off their designs if they don't cooperate. What's a tree-huuging version of a shopper to do? The couch is really well priced, well reviewed, and turns into a bed when the house is full of guests or an errant kid wanders downstairs to sleep with me with some B.S. story about bad dreams (hubby needs somewhere to go nearby). It's definitely spinning the moral compass of my shopping consciousness and but I might get this couch anyways.

Other alternative is.. (drum roll please...) Ikea (pronounced "icky-aaaah"). I have really mixed feelings about Ikea. I know in my heart that if something is too cheap, someone is suffering for my fortune, but I can't really envision a bunch of little Swedish children sewing my "Ungstørgd" with their tiny little chocolate smelling hands and being fed tiny little meatballs for their efforts. Obviously there are some really cool deals at Ikea and they deserve some credit for aspiring to offer some decent design to the masses. Last time I checked, they didn't lock their cleaning people in the building at night.

KARLSTAD sofa at Ikea, only $409 in Portland, ORSo the Ikea sofa I have in mind is a little "milk-toast". It's the KARLSTAD sofa and for some reason it's only $409 with a limey-yellow cover that I like. I'm guessing I'm one of the few people who actually like this color but maybe because it's a lot better in person than it is on their website. Still the website says it's $499 so I guess the lesson today is that there are deals at the store that you might not see online. Another plus is that is that if I get bored, or spill shit on it, I can always get a new color cover or change the legs, etc.

What I might do, is buy the Klippan because I have the patience of a gnat and order the Urban Outfitter's couch and wait the obligatory 4 weeks for it to get here. Urban Outfitter's offers free returns if I hate it and then I can sell the Klippan on Craigslist if I decide to keep it. With my Craiglist luck I can get close to what I paid considering most people will think I spent $499.