Sofa shopping

Wow, this ended up a lot longer than I planned.  Written at 2 in the morning after I've had a couple of Tramadol so apologies for the rambling.

My husband and I have decided we need new sofas, we've had our current ones for about 15 years and although still functional and fairly comfortable they are cracked and worn and have definitely suffered a lot of battering from our kids.  

As our kids are now both teenagers we are hoping our next sofas will take less abuse.

So yesterday we made the trip to an area of Milton Keynes where there are at least 8 stores together that all sell sofas - so we were able to do comparisons between stores.

Most of these stores charge delivery which is really annoying, of course I need sofas delivered as I would imagine at least 90% of their customers do.  But even if you don't need delivery, collection isn't always an option so you have to pay for delivery.  I guess it's one way they keep sofa prices down but then add on this hidden charge which varies massively between stores.  Some charge a fixed fee, some charge a per seat fee!  We found one with free delivery.

On the outside the sofas appear to all be of a similar quality but its the inside of the sofa that you need to question.  I overhead one sales person saying that their sofas were much softer because they are made in the traditional method! - From what I remember of my grandparents furniture it was never soft and squishy, always firm - so what is traditional, I didn't ask as this was store number 4 and I was getting sofa fatigue.

We have specific criteria so we were able to narrow down our options to 2 different sofas in 2 different stores - these are very different sofas, one of which is only available in one colour the other comes in at least 12 colour options which we have narrowed down to 2.  It's a daunting thing do we choose the colour that will dominate the room (teal) or do we choose the non-colour (grey) and then bring in the colour with curtains, etc.  I am leaning towards the teal as I think that will bring joy to the room.  Delivery from one store is £87, delivery from the other is free - £87 is a lot of cushions I could buy.

We are also going to change the carpet this year, currently a dark reddish with a small pattern.  We had this installed when we bought the house in the year 2000 so its time to retire the carpet and this time I want something neutral like grey.  The current carpet is a terrible background for photographs.

It will need to be a darkish grey (but no too dark) as husband drives HGVs and has a motorbike (oil, etc), we have a dog so wet and muddy footprints plus 2 teenagers - obviously I never make a mess!

But I want to add some fun to the room so I'm planning to pick up a couple of small armchairs from somewhere like Homesense, something quirky with colour.  These are chairs that won't be sat in as often as the sofas, unless the dog takes a fancy to one.  He sneaks onto the sofa when we are out of the room.  I would like to point out that he has 3 beds, yes 3 beds - one in the living room, one under the stairs and one in the dining room (it's not a big house but whenever we've bought him a new bed we haven't thrown the old ones away).    The dining room has laminate flooring so this is his favourite place in the summer, the bed in the living room is almost igloo shaped but he very rarely goes inside it and prefers to lay on top or turn it upside down and lay on the bottom!  This he uses when we are all in the living room or he lays at my feet.

The lovely memory foam bed under the stairs is where he goes at night.

But these are not decisions we are not going to rush into as we will have to live with them for at least 5 years and going on our history probably 10-15 years.  Plus one of the sofas is only on sale until tomorrow so I would wait until a Bank Holiday sale to order, why pay an extra £250 when you could just wait until April for the next sale.  And that will give us time to decorate.

I forgot to mention we are also changing the lighting in the room, currently we have a ceiling fan which I love but the light is just not bright enough and because of this we leave off the glass dome which makes it ugly.  I'm really the only person that turns on the fan, which I do throughout the summer, so I thought we could change to LED lighting and I will get a freestanding fan that I can put away for the winter.  I found some beautiful lights in John Lewis but husband nearly had asthma attack when he saw the price, I'll keep looking.  The trick is to try and find one he really likes that is way more expensive so then my first choice almost seems like a bargain p.s. he doesn't always read my blog and when he does he did probably wouldn't read to the end (hopefully).  

But just in case - hi honey, I love you.