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Couch confessions

Sunday 4 May 2014
It's amazing how long you can live with truly horrendous furniture before deciding to pry out the wallet and invest in something respectable. Or at least that's the case with Regan and I and our beat up, sorry excuse for a couch. "It's fine for now," we told ourselves. "No one else ever sees it anyway," we said. Except that sometimes they did, and it was embarrassing. Our nephew once asked if the torn section of the seat with the cracked and chipped-off faux leather was Brew's spot (our beloved beagle). "Ummmmm, nope. It just looks like that." And, to top it all off, it's the least comfortable couch in the world, or at least in the running to be. 


Ok, so maybe it is Brew's spot sometimes. He's conveniently covering the most offensive part. 
Trust me, it's worse than it looks. 

I've been stalking Kijiji for months looking for a cheap replacement and we've even gone to see two. The first was a poorly constructed used Ikea couch Regan deemed unfit (and that says a lot), and the second was a newer, similar version of what we have but much smaller - too much smaller. Then, as luck would have it (because it definitely wasn't pure skill), Regan won over $600 in a poker tournament! He suggested a GoPro and a hydraulic mountain bike seat, but naturally I persuaded him that a couch was a much better idea. #goteamwife

In an effort to curb our habit of impulse buying, we decided on a list of criteria the new couch would have to meet before we went shopping. 
1) $800 or less
2) Small enough to fit in our current living room 
3) Big enough to work in our future, larger living room
4) Must be comfortable - for Regan
5) Must be nice looking - for me 
6) Must be practical - for Brew and Gozo (le chat) and future kidlets

Our budget limited our shopping to furniture warehouses. In our area that means Leon's and The Brick. I was surprised to find quite a few options given our criteria. The sales people at both stores told us there were amazing, limited time sales going on at the moment, but isn't that always the case at these types of stores? "These prices won't last long! Buy now!" Despite being aware of these sale tactics, we're still suckers for them. I'm working on my poker face ...


I was a big fan of number 1. Regan agreed based on the high comfort factor. We talked ourselves out of it after realizing a pale blue/grey couch was a stain magnet. I still love the look of it, but I worried the colour would be hard to design around and I may end up regretting the purchase. My runner up was number 5, but it scored low on Regan's super subjective comfort test. His top picks were 2 and 6, both of which I could live with but wasn't particularly excited about. 

We were on our way out of the store to mull it over when a keen salesman noticed the sucker signs on our foreheads. Ten minutes later, he had sold us this couch:



Yup... it's cream. Didn't I say something about not wanting a stain magnet? Keen Salesman had an answer for that - fabric guard. I'm actually not sure what it's called but it's basically insurance on the fabric for the next five years. For a small added fee, of course. Still, this couch came in under budget at around $700 all in. I would have preferred something more streamlined, but this is something we could both agree on at a price we can afford. And it sure beats a hydraulic bike seat if you ask me. 

The couch was over-sold (Keen Salesman knows what he's doing), so we won't be bringing it home for about three weeks. In the meantime, I'm coming up with a plan for a DIY ottoman. Stay tuned. 


















1 comment:

  1. I think you made the right decision -- the one you chose looks so much nicer than any of the other six!

    ReplyDelete

 
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