Odi et Amo: Ikea to the Rescue

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Ikea to the Rescue

My husband's cat Subi first met my PB Basic armchair in the summer of 2006 -- and it was love at first sight -- or was it hate at first sight? -- It's hard to tell with cats, honestly. Within weeks, my once pristine chair, slip covered in cranberry twill, looked like the worn-out hand-me-down of an old cat lady. Subi positively destroyed it. When it was time to move from Austin to Houston at the end of that summer, I knew I'd need to get a new slipcover or else pass down my chair to a UT college student. Since the chair was only a few years old, pretty comfortable and not cheap, I opted for the former. That is, until I saw what Pottery Barn wanted to charge for a replacement: $459. I nearly gagged on my Starbucks. That's roughly half the cost of the original chair. I figured there had to be a more reasonable solution (after all, I still hadn't started work yet and was therefore technically still on a grad student budget) that didn't necessitate any DIY'ing. Ah Ikea. You come to the rescue again. Behold the side-by-side comparison of the PB Basic Chair and the EKTORP Chair from Ikea:

PB v. Ikea by averillh1

They look identical in real life, too -- and for the record, are sized identically as well. And the cost for a new EKTORP slipcover? $129.00. S0, for the price of one new replacement slipcover from Pottery Barn, you can get two from Ikea and still have money left in your wallet. Granted, you're a bit more limited in selection from Ikea (they only sell cotton slipcovers, while PB has extensive fabric options ranging from twill and denim to velvet and linen), but their patterns are definitely more modern than PB's if you're looking for an update.

And so, my lovely chair was saved (and so was my cash): the cranberry twill slipcover from PB was replaced with a white cotton slipcover from Ikea and has been moved to our bedroom, safe from Subi's love.*

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* - For the record, I'm allergic to cats -- and yet, somehow, I live with two: Subi and Clio (both rescue tabbies). To minimize their ill effects on my health, neither cat is allowed in our bedroom. As a result, I've also developed a habit of keeping any furniture, rugs, etc. that the cats are particularly fond of in our bedroom as a prophylactic measure.