You broke your bed, now you must lie in it

About six or seven years ago we bought new bedroom furniture, including a king-sized bed to replace the queen we had before. Not too long afterward, Annamarie dropped one of her precious items of plastic jewelry down behind the headboard and commenced to screech her fool head off, which was her preferred method of communication before she learned to talk 16 hours a day. The only way that infernal noise was ever going to stop assaulting our eardrums was for someone to retrieve the jewelry. To this day I don't know why we didn't get a long stick with duct tape or a broom or anything more well thought out than trying to move that whole king-sized bed, mattresses and all, by yanking on one corner of it.

Not surprisingly, the wood splintered at the point where the sides hook onto the footboard. As a temporary measure we put a stack of books under that corner, which luckily faces away from the door, and thus it has remained until this very day. Well, with slight modifications by Ruby, who decided the books were great fun to chew on. Upon which to chew? Whatever. Isn't this fashionable home decor?



The time has come to purchase a new bed and probably other stuff to match. The rest of our house has fairly nice furniture, but the master bedroom is propped up on dog-chewed books and features an armoire that we bought for $269 at Office Depot and I assembled myself. It is made of genuine wood products (TM) and pressboard and the drawers don't close quite right but it has served us well for 14 years or so.

The challenge now is that Ron and I have different tastes in furniture. I am wanting something in a style like this:



And Ron would prefer something more like this:



I think that formal cherry furniture is lovely, but it doesn't go with the rest of our casual, country-ish home. There is certain to be marital discord before a compromise is reached.

There is also the question of where to buy. Do we hit the local furniture stores and hope for holiday sales? Do we drive to High Point, NC, furniture mecca, and overwhelm ourselves with choices? Do we trust online vendors and buy furniture sight unseen? Maybe we ought to just replace the books.