So, in an effort to distract ourselves from the lingering sadness that comes when you lose a family member, and to distract my 8 year-old niece from missing her mother too much (who was away on a vacation/conference trip for 10 days) we took a little vacation to NYC to visit family. We (not in this order, and not all in one day, and I’m certain I’ve left something vital out): walked until our (my) feet were swollen; enjoyed the Botanic Garden in Brooklyn; walked across the Brooklyn Bridge (twice!); ate real New York pizza, bagels and doughnuts, and visited restaurants old and dear; saw Chinatown and, as my niece put it, a “Little Tiny Italy”; strolled through Central Park; (she) went to Coney Island and swam in the ocean; (she, ok and we) played at NY parks, including running through a sprinkler with her clothes on; took a trip to the New York Hall of Science (a kid-tastic highlight); visited with each and every auntie and (formerly) untle (now uncle – sigh) we could muster up, and just generally forgot about the world at home for a bit. Well, we mostly forgot about it. We did manage to do a little design reconnaissance at Room & Board.

See, we’ve been hunting for a new bed for our master bedroom. We have a bed. We like our bed. But we have two extra mattresses that are currently stacked on top of each other in the guest room. (We donated the former guest room bed frame during our renovation.) And I’m craving an upholstered bed to go with our cozy, but elegant, master bedroom/bathroom makeover. So, yeah, we’ve been looking at beds for about 6 months or so.

First, we almost got the Layla bed from Mitchell Gold & Bob Williams.

Kinda traditional, but still kinda clean and modern feeling.

But when we looked at it we realized that it required a box spring. Apparently all of the MG&BW beds are designed that way. We’re really more platform bed users, so that, plus a bit of a rickety display model made us think twice. These beds aren’t cheap!

Our current bed is a Room & Board one (Calvin) that we got several years ago. We’ve never had a problem, it’s totally sturdy, and we’ve moved it many times without an issue. So, then, after hunting and compromising (my style is decidedly more feminine than the hub’s), we arrived at this gorgeous gem, Wyatt from Room & Board:

Cleaner, more modern, but still elegant and platform ready.

The problem we’re having is in choosing a fabric. The stock fabric is too creamy, but the alternate (Trip in Linen, pictured here) is softly grey, with a neutral, can-go-with-anything kind of vibe (it’s much greyer in person). But the texture isn’t our favorite. It’s kinda on the nubby side. Nubby = dusty in my book.

So, now we’re debating between safe and grey, but not the greatest texture… Or, creamy, and delicious that would totally go with our current color scheme:

Dustin in Natural has a multi-tonal flat woven texture that includes shades of grey, cream and white.

Or, lovely texture and color for a future home in the city (we’re expecting to need to move in the next year or two back to NYC and into an apartment, hence the no box spring rule):

Dustin in Pewter is actually pretty blue-grey, and deeper than pictured here. But lovely, masculine and classic.

The debate continues… what do you guys think?

*Lyrics from Eric Clapton’s Layla.