The Ongoing Couch Search

You'd think that it would be easy to find furniture, right? Well, I bet that the Adorable Husband is wishing right about now that he'd jumped on the bandwagon at Sofa Mart to buy the original sofa that I liked.

Hah! He didn't like that one (well, I have to admit that the ingrained tendency he has to look for quality merchandise, learned from his parents, is almost always a Good Thing). Now, it does have a good warranty, and while it's not hand-tied 8-way springs and down cushions, it does have a lifetime warranty on the springs and cushions, but it's definitely on the low end of "decent quality furniture". I would have been perfectly happy with it. And, as many people pointed out, if I spent only 2K on a couch and loveseat, I wouldn't feel so bad about replacing it in five or seven years.

So we went to Kacey Fine Furniture this week and talked to one of their designers. They have some very nice furniture, and the very nice designer we talked to reaffirmed my possible furniture layout. While he was a bit dismissive of the fact that I picked the color of the walls before the furniture, he had a few options that definitely fell in our price range.

The other option was a local design center that apparently caters to the McMansion set -- the designer was quite skeptical that we could get what we wanted for less than 5K or so. She seemed a bit put out that we didn't budget ten grand for living room furniture. Um, no. Probably not. If it's perfect, maybe -- but six thousand for a couch is probably out of our price range right now.

Although, considering that we are already budgeting for new carpeting --which we'll put in next spring when we are absolutely sure that the puppies are reliably housetrained-- skimping on a sofa doesn't make a lot of sense. We visited La-z-boy, which has a sofa style that I really like and we can customize the fabrics to come awfully close to what I want. We'll be back there this week to get a good quote and see what's what.

To be honest, I'm not in a hurry. There isn't anything WRONG with the current furniture (well, the recliner is pretty much toast, but it's structurally fine) and I just want a change, but it's not like I"m going to go bonkers without it.

It's almost impossible to shop for furniture, though. I mean -- where did the local furniture shop go? WE used to have a dozen or more furniture showrooms around, I remember my parents going from one to the other looking for everything from sofas to kitchen tables. Nowadays, you have the choice of American Furniture Warehouse -- the mecca of low-end to medium-quality furniture, and Ethan Allen (which carries my grandmother's furniture and avant garde minimalist furniture and nothing in between, and that's about it. We have online, of course, but I think most people don't want to buy furniture they can't sit on, you know? It's really frustrating. It's especially frustrating if you don't like the current trend in furniture and want something a little different. We definitely don't want leather, which limits us to about a quarter of the available furniture styles. Hmph.

There is a distinct possibility that I can ask a good friend who is working in Salt Lake City to visit the one showroom that apparently has my favorite couch, so hopefully he will have time to go and sit in it and see if it's is comfortable. I trust his opinion entirely, and if he says it's ok, I may order it long distance and have it shipped here. Here's hoping!

I have to commend the Adorable Husband on his patience, of course. He is even managing to express an opinion or two about decorating He was having a conversation with a coworker about how we deal with conflict in our marriage and the only thing he could think of that we really argue about is decorating. Heh.