With hiring the Secret Service to protect a darn sofa out of the question, the producer and set decorator scoured the Crappy Old Furniture section of Craigslist. Since they couldn't get an exact match for the original living room set, they ended up buying two worn-out couches for 400 bucks, sawed one in half, and then rebuilt the frame, customizing it into a matching easy chair. This resulted in some authentically gnarly furniture, but the upholstery wasn't close enough, dammit. LA stores were much too hip for what they were looking for, so the crew turned to a Midwest RV manager who had tons of 1970s brown plaid fabric. Even when the items were reupholstered, they still weren't authentic enough, so the set decorator hand-painted red stripes on the plaid to make it "rustier," and hired a guy with a power sander to wear it down. At this point, inventing a time machine would have entailed less effort.
CBS StudiosSadly, this meant there wasn't there wasn't any money left over for an animatronic Tom Arnold.
The end result was quite convincing, and totally worth it, since this would definitely be a show that would stick around for a long, long time!
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