Sofa, So Good

Way back when we moved into the first place we rented, we bought a second-hand couch. It was not stylish, it was purely functional. And cheap. And now we have lived with it for over six years, bringing it with us from our rental place to our house when we moved.

We really didn't think we would worry about replacing it for awhile yet. Our thoughts ran to getting out of the toddler years, and possibly puppy years down the road if we decide to get another dog, before we would get a new couch.

What we weren't really thinking about was that when Bert moved over to his big boy room, we lost our only guest bed. Huh. What now? One overnight guest could sleep on the couch, or we could buy an air mattress. Neither of those options oozed hospitality. We started mulling getting a sleeper sofa. Then we threw caution to the wind and just went ahead and bought one.

Ok, so we didn't really buy the couch on impulse. I spent a couple weeks browsing the websites of furniture stores that we have nearby, narrowing down things we liked and were in our price range. Then on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, when we thought we could hit the best sales, we headed out. Six hours, numerous stores, and lots of sitting and testing later, we ended up back at the first store we tried, buying the first sleeper sofa we really liked. (Funny side note: None of the couches we sat on felt right until we realized we were sitting on the wrong ends. Keith always takes the right side, and I'm on the left, and they all felt weird when we switched.) We were told it was out of stock, so the normal three-day delivery time wasn't available but it should be ready in about ten days. Much to our delight, it ended up taking only a couple days and was actually delivered within a week.

Drumroll please...

Now wasn't that exciting? We are pretty stoked about a new couch, and glad to provide something better than an air mattress to any guests we have. We had taken one of the living room valances along while shopping to make sure the color would work, and are happy to find it looks great in the living room in the flesh. Or in the upholstery, I guess would be more accurate.

We have resigned ourselves to the fact that this is the couch for the kid years, and it will someday have to be replaced. But one feature we really liked is that all the cushions are removable, so we can have an everyday side and a company-is-coming side. So if you come to visit, we'll put our best side out. (Just don't flip and see what the other side looks like, deal?)

And perhaps the best part of the way the timing all worked out was that the new couch's arrival on a Friday meant we could drag the old one out to our garage sale and make a couple bucks on it. We were happy to see it go, and the people who bought it were really excited to get it for their son who was moving into his first place. Funny how that works.