OH BOY!

I love men (clearly) but one place they don't belong is in a furniture store making design decisions. This weeks case: A lovely client, we'll call him Butch, wanted help purchasing a hip, modern, clean-lined sofa for his living room. Naturally, he hired a gay guy to help him transform his bachelor pad (read: rooms filled with fast food wrappers, bean bags, posters of women with large breasts and an odor of dirty pillows in the air) into a grown-up living space. While I wanted to whip him around the sassy shops of SoHo, he wanted to head north to Poughkeepsie, New York (emphasis on POO) to an east coast furniture chain called BOB'S. Butch fell in love with BOB'S late night advertising, sandwiched between reruns of the Maury Povich show and COPS, showcasing sofas with cup holders, built in coolers, disco lights and vibrators. While I tried to explain to Butch that cup holders and fake wood panels were better suited for a Ford Explorer, my pleas fell on deaf ears, so we went furniture shopping on the corner of Hell and Oh My. What we found...well, take a look at the photo above. For $1,500 you, too, can walk out of BOB's with a lovely faux-leather sofa with 8 cup holders (more than the average mini-van), dual recliners, odor-resistant cushions and a one year limited warranty. Humm. When Butch said "I'll take two" thank God a mattress broke my fainting fall. Once I regained consciousness, I pulled up www.cb2.com on my blackberry (Crate and Barrel's less expensive, more modern furniture store) and convinced the boy inside Butch to move away from the frat-pad and into the modern world.

TIME TO COMPLETE TASK: One hour to shop, one week for in-home delivery

COST: Sofa at CB2: $599, Side Chair $299, Bauhaus Lamp $199

STRESS LEVEL: Able to couch a bad purchase before it happened: LOW