This Amish-country style beauty is my Mom’s, and she’s had it forever and ever. So long in fact, that it’s been recovered three times. It has a lovely pine back and rolled arms. She bought it for $200 sometime in the 70s from Terrace Hill, the Governor’s mansion in Des Moines, Iowa. She found the sofa through an ad in the paper (back then, Terrace Hill was a private home). When she and her first husband went to pick it up, they learned that the caretaker, who was selling the sofa, was recently widowed and moving out the mansion. They scored not only the sofa, but also the newly available caretaker job, and got to live in the mansion’s basement, which must have been cool for two twenty-somethings. When she married my dad, he encouraged her to write a book about the mansion, and she did, along with his help. So there you go – a sofa that led to a mansion-apartment and a book deal. Nice!
Actually, I had the sofa covered only three times. Once after I bought it I changed it to a yellow/grey velour; then, after our D.C. home’s ceiling collapsed on it, I found a colorful floral tapestry that looked good railroaded (so that no seams showed on the back or seat cushion) and most recently, I found a great chenille paisley floral in NYC.