Let me put in a plug for the Midwest standard sectional. I guarantee you’ll see a lot of them the longer you live here. There is no way to defend them from a design standpoint but they sure are comfy.

I’m talking about a big, overstuffed deal with multiple electric recliners. Microfiber, usually some shade of brown or gray, sometimes navy.

You will never see one of these in Architectural Digest but when the weather drops to the teens and you’re tired from shoveling the drive these crazy sofas are like a big warm bear hug. Most have cup holders, some have heat, reading lights, and phone chargers.

Bougie as hell but well suited to their environment.

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Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

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No, I think it's very pretty. It has classic lines.

Thank you! I want "simple" in the sofa. We can brighten it up with cushions and a chair with flashy fabric.

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If there's a way to check the sturdiness of those wooden legs, that would be a good thing.

Ooh, good point, I didn't think of that.

So, I guess this one (the Flexsteel) and the Jonathan Louis one are in the $2000 range (for standard three-cushion sofa, I don't know about the sectionals)....

Does that seem like a reasonable amount that should get us a good quality item?

Yes. At that price point the quality is likely to be be decent.

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:
Thanks for the votes of confidence on that sofa. I think that’s the design we’ll aim for.

Next up: trying to find an app where I can upload photos of the living room and see what different furniture will look like in it.

I’ve been googling around half the night and still can’t find something that lets me do that.

Well, you’re looking at a beige sofa. Not sure it’s going to require a lot of consideration as far as fitting in the space.

Heh. Forgive me again, you’re on another favorite subject. I’m way more active on Reddit on this subject than I should be. What the heck, I’m retired and I have the time.

Jodi taught me this and I’m been evangelizing it all over the internet. Perhaps you don’t want a sofa (Grandma called it a Davenport), you want a room.

WWJD? What would Jodi do?

Jodi taught me that the hot ticket is to find something to inspire - a picture, a rug, a fabric, a shirt, a fish, a bird, a napkin, a fabric. Find that piece and design the room around it, paying attention to color, texture, scale and style. If you don’t have that inspiration you’ll buy a lot of beige stuff and post endlessly on Reddit, lamenting that your space is drab, depressing, and boring.

I’m still a fan of the neutral sofa fabric but what is your direction?

Ashley does have some higher quality furniture. I have a leather recliner we bought for my knee replacement recovery, and I sit in that thing many hours a day for the past several years--it's become my writing chair. Wags (our young heeler) lies in it with me. It has lumbar and head adjustments in addition to reclining. Still looks brand new and has not worn out at all.

We also have an Ashley double recliner we bought for watching tv--bought it practically new, second hand. It is carp. I thought since the knee replacement recliner was such good quality this one would be too, but apparently not everything Ashley sells is the same quality.

So you might want to go back to Ashley and just look at their higher grade stuff.

I understand Mr SK may be opposed to used furniture, but really, they don't make furniture like they used to. Reupholstering is always an option.

The main sofas we use in our house are Crate and Barrel brand - we bought them used on Craigslist and they are holding up amazingly well -- like we've owned them for at least 10 years and they still look brand new. We have a sofa in our living room from Lee Industries - not sure if they are still around, but they are supposed to be a very high quality manufacturer and the sofa has held up great although it doesn't see nearly the amount of use that the family room ones do. Crate and Barrel used to sell them but I'm not sure if they still do.

As far as buying new sofas/armchairs, we've done a few different things. You used to be able to find the manufacturer, model and such of the sofa you wanted and order it from North Carolina. Most of the US made furniture was made down there and there were several stores that started up as almost a "Factory Direct" kind of marketing with much cheaper prices than we could get at our local stores on the same exact sofa even with paying shipping from NC. We got our very first sofa set that way in 1998. I'm not sure this works as well these days because I think a lot of the big manufacturers down there have either gone out of business or started outsourcing everything to other countries. But if you google North Carolina furniture outlet you might find something.

The other thing we've done is shop a store in our area called "The Dump." I'm not sure if there's anything like it where you are but it's basically a big factory overstock kind of liquidation place. It's nice inside (looks like a regular furniture store, not like something called "the Dump" LOL!) but they basically just sell floor models of all different manufacturers -- basically anything they could get cheap when some other manufacturer or furniture store needed to liquidate it. We've gotten a really nice Natuzzi sofa there as well as a few chairs and end tables over the years. Their exact selection is hit or miss because their inventory is just whatever they could get that month but they have a huge inventory and I've always found something that worked for what I needed. Here's the link so you can see how they operate - again, I'm pretty sure they are just local to SE PA, but I bet there's something like it in every state. https://www.thedump.com/

ETA - I just looked at their link and it looks like all the Dumps around here went out of business! But there are several around the nation including a few in IL. Honestly if it's not super far, it might be worth the trip for you....the sofa we got from them retailed for like $3300 and I think we paid $799. It's that kind of discount. You do have to do your own pickup and like I said, you get what's on the floor - you can't pick your color and fabric. But you get amazing quality for an ikea price.

I definitely don't want a sectional, it would overwhelm the room. If we had a den or something separate, it might work, but our living room will have to do triple duty as our living room, our entertaining room, and our tv room.

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WWJD? What would Jodi do?

I like this idea. We'll have to think about what piece to use as the focus.

I think we'll still be ok with a solid color sofa (probably not beige though, maybe a nice warm brown or espresso color? dunno yet), because we'll have our artwork up and so on.

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Reupholstering is always an option.

Yes, except it's also pretty expensive and I don't think it would make sense if we replacing all the "soft" parts of an item -- i.e., just just the covers but the cushions/foam parts as well.

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Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Heh. Forgive me again, you’re on another favorite subject. I’m way more active on Reddit on this subject than I should be. What the heck, I’m retired and I have the time.

Jodi taught me this and I’m been evangelizing it all over the internet. Perhaps you don’t want a sofa (Grandma called it a Davenport), you want a room.

WWJD? What would Jodi do?

Jodi taught me that the hot ticket is to find something to inspire - a picture, a rug, a fabric, a shirt, a fish, a bird, a napkin, a fabric. Find that piece and design the room around it, paying attention to color, texture, scale and style. If you don’t have that inspiration you’ll buy a lot of beige stuff and post endlessly on Reddit, lamenting that your space is drab, depressing, and boring.

I’m still a fan of the neutral sofa fabric but what is your direction?

Yep. That’s what we did with our first floor. The dining room rug set the style and palate. RUGS are a very good inspiration piece.

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Originally posted by Mikhailoh:
Drugs are a very good inspiration piece.

Lisa, thanks for the suggestion. I'm googling around and not seeing much that looks promising...

I'm kind of hesitant when it comes to outlet stores, because of what I've read about clothing outlets -- namely that the items in outlet stores are not left-over quality items (i.e., what people think they're getting), but are actually lesser quality items made specifically for outlets.

Why would furniture be any different?

Mik, WTG

Mik, assuming that's a typo/autocorrect, I will say that the rug I have under my piano has always been a guide for me, but now the piano is going to be in a different room from the living room (yay!) so in a way we can kind of start with a blank slate.

btw here's my piano rug:



Here it is in my piano room at our old house.

hmm looking at these photos, now I'm wondering if we actually want to change the living room wall color.

This photo is navajo white (which I found on Steve's recommendation). I think the living room walls in the new house are more... white?

Hmm. We probably need to figure that out pretty quickly.

That’s a very nice rug for a room palate. I wouldn’t go too far from that in another room. You want the style of the house to flow from room to room and it would seem you like warm earthtones. You could easily add some greens, maybe oranges?

We're also fans of neutral paint colors. Navajo White is pretty standard and we had it for years, but it is a "yellow" white. I switched to a more beige-y white and I like it much better.

This isn't to say that Navajo White wouldn't be a great color for you, more to point out that all off-whites aren't the same.

If I remember correctly, we started with "Latte" from maybe restoration hardware? Some sort of trendy store like that, took it to our local paint store and had them lighten it. I think we eventually went with 25 pct pigment.

Sherwin Williams has a super neutral grey off white called "Accessible Beige" that's also really nice.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Heh. Forgive me again, you’re on another favorite subject. I’m way more active on Reddit on this subject than I should be. What the heck, I’m retired and I have the time.

Jodi taught me this and I’m been evangelizing it all over the internet. Perhaps you don’t want a sofa (Grandma called it a Davenport), you want a room.

WWJD? What would Jodi do?

Jodi taught me that the hot ticket is to find something to inspire - a picture, a rug, a fabric, a shirt, a fish, a bird, a napkin, a fabric. Find that piece and design the room around it, paying attention to color, texture, scale and style. If you don’t have that inspiration you’ll buy a lot of beige stuff and post endlessly on Reddit, lamenting that your space is drab, depressing, and boring.

I’m still a fan of the neutral sofa fabric but what is your direction?

I *really* need a new recliner, one my back is happier with, but I freaking matched the fabric of the 2 recliners to the rug and everything else that goes in the TV room, and I don’t want to change it!!