Guess what everyone!  We are getting a new couch!  I am so pumped, and here’s why…

When Peter and I bought our house in November of 2008, it meant we were moving from a little cabin in the woods to a two story suburban home.  In terms of square feet, we tripled our living space.  So when we decided to put our green couch and love seat in the basement family room upon moving in, we were left with zero furniture for our first floor living room.  And I do mean zero furniture.  Not a couch or a chair or a rug or a lamp or an end table was in sight. We just had a TV, which we watched while sitting on kitchen chairs.  Not good for snuggling.  So we went shopping.

I found an old trunk on Craigslist that we turned into a coffee table, we nabbed an area rug at Home Depot and then took a trip to the Slumberland Clearance center where we acquired a couch, chair and end table.  (If Peter were writing this post he would tell you all about how I had the poor sales guy carrying pieces of furniture around the store to see how they looked next to each other, but Peter isn’t writing this post, so we’ll skip it.  But if you ever hear him refer to the “Slumberland Incident” you’ll know what he’s talking about.)  So in a few weeks we went from this much furniture…

To (about) this much…

The picture above is actually about 11 months after we moved in, during which time we added several things (console table, stuff on the mantle, etc.) but all the major pieces were in place after just a couple weeks of living in our house.

Here’s what our couch looked like from the front:

Now we knew when we bought one of the cheapest couch models available that we would want to eventually replace it once we had more time for shopping and money in our budget.  We were crossing our fingers that we’d like the couch for 5-7 years.  Well, it’s only been four and a half, but we’re calling that ‘close enough’.  Peter thinks the couch is terribly uncomfortable.  He’s been talking about replacing it for at least a year now.  I don’t think it’s as bad as he does, but my sister is getting married and needs furniture for their new place.  What’s that old saying?  When opportunity knocks… you give away the couch.  Yeah, something like that.

So last weekend we went couch shopping again.  Our goal was to find a couch with the following features:

– super duper comfortable
– similar overall size to our current couch
– bigger seating area (i.e. smaller arms) than what we have now
– clean lined, but not ultra modern
– made in the USA
– built to last 20+ years

We went to a furniture gallery in Minneapolis and quickly fell in love with a manufacturer (Lee Industries) and a fabric (a heavy 100% cotton with a subtle basket weave texture, in a putty color).  But since this is me and Peter we are talking about, you had to have already guessed the one thing we couldn’t agree on.  That’s right… style!

To help us sort it out I put together an idea board for our living room.  This first one shows my couch choice (pictured in a linen fabric, not the cotton we like):

And this is the same board with Peter’s choice (again, not in the fabric we chose):

Peter’s biggest objections to my choice were that it is two inches shallower than his (possibly making it less comfortable) and that he didn’t like the ‘swooping arms’.  My objection to his choice was that it was just too boxy for the slightly ornate rug that it would be sitting on.  We sat on the decision for a few days and it was beginning to look like we might just keep our current couch after all, when Peter came up with a compromise.  He said he would let me have final say on the living room couch if he got final say when it came time to replace the family room couch.  And while I am loathe to give up an ounce of decorative control in my house, I had to acknowledge the fairness of the offer, and I took it.

So, we will be getting my couch for the living room.  (Picture me doing a Rocky-style victory dance around my house.)  Now we just have to finalize the order and wait eight to ten weeks for delivery.  Eight to ten weeks… uggg!  But they say you can’t rush perfection, so I will sit on pins and needles and pray that it really will be perfect.  Because if it’s not, I’ll never hear the end of it.

Oh the suspense!