Eight months ago, we moved into a house. It’s a very, very, very fine house, but it’s rather modest in proportions. Our son’s room is tiny, and what’s more, all of the walls have either a window or a door interrupting their line, so it’s a bit of a challenge to furnish.
But hey, he’s three. His needs are limited. And so I’ve slowly assembled – literally! – a collection of Ikea furniture that works quite well.
The sticking point is the bed. After rejecting several reasonable but not-quite-right models from a number of lower price point retailers, I took to the ‘net. And there I found it. Designer ducduc’s Campaign Bed. Crafted of sustainably harvested hardwoods, with mango, dark chocolate, white or kelly faux leather accents, it was precisely what I’d been dreaming up.
With, unfortunately, a nightmare price tag. $2,420 on the first site; a mere $2095 on another.
This would buy at least 20 of the Ikea bed frames I’ve rejected. I can’t do it. Heck, we only put an extra $1000 in our son’s 529 college savings account at year’s end. I don’t think our entire dining room set cost more than two grand.
Nope. I’ve shelled out for high end design for plenty of kiddie products – our Svan high chair, the Quinny Zapp stroller than a friend shipped us from Luxembourg a year before they were available stateside – but this is a bed, and somehow I can’t see spending such a staggering sum of cash on a flat surface.
It also takes 16 to 20 weeks to custom order one of these bad boys – apparently, the demand is not so great that you just drive up to the High End Design shop and toss one in the back of the Range Rover. Too bad, because if I could impulse buy one, who knows? After weeks of searching for a bed, I might just give in and abuse my Visa.
I’ve found another, not quite-nearly-as-cool, but at least not-wallet-punishing alternative – the Locker Twin Bed from Elite Products, free shipping. I’m reluctant to order a large piece of furniture from an unknown web merchant – especially because that means yours truly will be schlepping the bed up three flights of stairs after the UPS driver helpfully leaves it in the shrubbery.
It’s enough to make me call a high end designer, sign over the contents of our short term savings and say “Wake me up when it looks like InStyle would do a photo shoot here.”
When did kiddie design get so high end? It seems to me that the height of fashion, back when I was pint-sized, was to order the latest cartoon-licensed bedding from the Sears Catalog. I had Strawberry Shortcake. But today, my 3 y.o. has DwellShop linens and might still have a bed that costs more than many people earn in a month.
I need to be stopped.
