And I thought taking the husband to IKEA is the only place on earth where there is divorce on the cards oh no how wrong was I! Choosing a sofa for our new house was nearly has frustrating as me not finding the perfect dress for our wedding but this time with added moving and packing stress! Its never a good idea to go to a furniture store whilst preparing for a rather large house move not that I want to repeat buying a house anything soon (ever!!) but I will defiantly keep it in mind to get the move over and done with before even attempting to settle for some thing to sit down on in the living room.
I had that idea of leaving our very comfy but very very done by 12 year old leather corner couch from DFS – which has been bought by Mr. C. prior to us getting together – off the removal van all together and advertising it for free on the local selling pages but after 2 attempts of us nearly jumping on each others throat aka heading to various furniture stores trying to settle on a sofa we both like! He didn’t like my sterile “dentist waiting room” couch aka the Zink range from French Connection for DFS and I wasn’t overly warmed by his desire to get a recliner (from the Newbury range) into our new living room:
They couldn’t be any further apart in style so in the end we drove home with no decision made because time was running up picking up the kids from the babysitter. We had been to a different big furniture a couple of days beforehand but we did the not so clever thing of taking a 3 year old with us so that cut the whole “looking for couch” procedure into a rushed 15 min in and out job which of course was unsuccessful too!
Scroll forward a couple of weeks and we have now moved into our new house and found space for everything. We also moved around our current furniture and sofas in the new living room to get a feel for it before heading off (childfree thanks to my parents who came all the way from Germany to help us with the move!) once again to the scary place aka the furniture store! Just before entering the building Mr. C. turned around and told me that he has decided NOT to get a recliner sofa after all and he’s open to everything today. Well it must have been our lucky day because within 30 minutes of browsing around we have found 2 couches we really liked the look of it and with some advice from the very helpful Staff Member Chas in the Poole branch of DFS we set up our payment and delivery date in no time and now just after 2 weeks later we now have 2 shiny new 3 seater couches plus a FREE (storage) footstool (thanks to some vouchers we received in the post as an Easter BH weekend special) in our garage ready to take pride of place in our new living room very very soon. We currently painting the room from a yellowish colour back to white (for now) having a radiator removed (and replaced with a vertical one) new flooring done and hopefully find some nice looking curtains to go on the bay window too. So for now I can only share the picture I took in the store you might recognise the added pillows and footstool from the above image of the Zink range so I got (part) of my wish after all (btw. this one is the Topaz range in teal):
I also asked a few fellow Bloggers whats important to them when buying a new couch and here are their answers:
Laura from Five Little Doves said: “My biggest worry was whether it was child friendly. And by that I mean whether it would be easy to remove bodily fluids, sticky hand prints and felt tip pen.”
Lauren who blogs over at Belle du Brighton told me: “Whatever you do don’t go for ‘pillow back’ sofas – they look good for 6 months then they go flat and hard to keep in place… then the kids just fling them all over the place and it’s a nightmare!”
Becca who can be found on Pears and Chocolate Sauce said: “A combo of design and price. In some ways really regret it because it is such an uncomfortable sofa, but on the other hand we rent and it’s not our ‘forever’ sofa (I hope!). Also it’s L-shaped with built-in storage and doubles as a sofa bed, so quite handy from that respect, and while we’re in the ‘young kids’ season of life it’s good not to have to be too precious about it because it was only £500 or so.”
Danielle from Blog By Baby said: “I always make sure the sides are sown up to the cushions. Stuff used to disappear down the sides and back in my old one, including ipads, remotes and even a hamster (no joking, had to cut bottom off sofa to get him out!)”
Nyomi from Nomi Palony told me: “Something I never really thought about but is actually quite important is the height. We have quite a low couch, my mother always complained that it was hard for her to get in and out of with a bad back. I didn’t understand this until I was recovering from my emergency c section and it was so hard to sit down and get up from. A low couch can be easier for new crawlers/toddlers to climb up on – which can be a good or bad thing, depending which way you look at it. A higher sofa can be worse when they inevitably fall off it. My sofa is fabric as I personally prefer the look and feel but now I have a 2 and 5 year old I need to move to some wipeable leather stat!”
Have you recently bought a sofa? Are you happy with your decision?
Comments (2)
That is the sofa I am planning on getting! Just need to find time to actually go and buy it!
We bought our sofa in DFS, too. We looked it up on the website first and then went and saw it “in person”. We agreed on it pretty much straight away.. with a toddler in tow. ha