since the small scale sectional from west elm did not work, we started over with our sofa search. for the den, we were trying to find something modular, that was reasonably priced, and wasn't ugly. after looking at local furniture stores, craigslist, and other places online, our search ended at ikea. and yes, i realize that ikea was the obvious answer given our criteria, but since ikea is in chicago and not st louis, we just never really seriously considered it. i was also concerned about the quality of their sofas. but after reading many reviews of the karlstad series, i realized that this sofa would solve many of our concerns.
like most things ikea, the sofa comes in pieces. and each box was small enough to easily fit up the stairs. i also really liked that because of the way it is constructed, we'd always have the option of changing the configuration, or adding on to the sofa in the future. the entire thing is slipcovered (but doesn't look like it is), which is also nice in case we need to wash the cover, or want a different color sofa in the future. we had sat on this sofa before so we knew it was comfortable. it seemed like the perfect solution - the only issue was that the sofa was 4.5 hours away in chicago. i decided that the sofa, combined with the random list of things i had been looking at from ikea for the baby room, justified a day trip. when my family came to visit in april, we rented a uhaul trailer one day and drove to ikea for the sofa.
assembling the karlstad sofa was only slightly more complicated than most ikea things, but i was impressed with how well constructed it seemed to be. the slipcovers fit nice and tight, and now that it's all together and in place, i'm annoyed at myself for not just going with ikea in the first place.
next up, we still wanted to find a new sofa for the living room. we thought that finding a regular sofa with a slightly larger budget would be easier. turns out, not so much. we knew we would be using this sofa a lot so we were even more picky about it. we like to relax, and watch movies in our living room, so we wanted something that was extra comfortable. keep in mind that i am 5'-2" tall, and mike is 6'-4". our definition of comfort is a little different. we also have 4 pets, and a baby on the way. we eat on the couch. the sofa needed to be durable. and sofa's are expensive, so we wanted to make sure that we whatever we purchased was something that we felt good about, and would be able to have for a long time. we shopped and shopped and shopped... and we kept coming back to this one:
the sofa is supposed to be delivered tomorrow morning, and then the donation company is coming on tuesday to pick up our green sofa, chair, and ottoman. so hopefully everything goes well and our sofa saga will be complete in the next few days, wish us luck!
**update - guess who called as soon as i hit "post"? crate & barrel - our sofa did not arrive this week as planned, so now it won't be here until next saturday. can't say i'm all that surprised given how this whole sofa process has been going!
