Our new couch

I love my one post per month trend for 2009, don't you? :-)

Little by little Geoff has been adding things to our living room to make it more "home theatre" like. The latest update is a Blu-Ray player, and sure enough he now only wants to watch movies downstairs. I prefer to watch them upstairs in our room... it's just more comfortable. A few weeks ago Geoff decided that this is because our couch is not spacious enough and we both can't "lounge" on it. After some persuasion, I agreed that he might be right. We also had staged our family room for our house being on the market (aka put the two comfortable chairs we have in there) so there is no other seating in our living room so it's kind of awkward when people come over to visit. We agreed that it might be time to go shopping for a sectional.

A couple of weekends ago we went to a million furniture stores… the Furniture Depot (a store that I LOVED where I bought all of my furniture when I first moved to Portland... the guy there, Carl, was just awesome) shut down a year or two ago so we couldn't go there. Instead we checked out all of the others on TV Hwy (where the Furniture Depot was) and then there is a cluster of stores on a street named Cornell. Most of them have Stanton furniture (which is a brand our current couch is - they are AWESOME), so it's just a matter of picking the right place you want to order from.

We were up on Cornell driving around checking out some places on Saturday (Dania, Dania Home, Ashley Furniture) and we went into a new store called Urban Home. I didn't want to go into it because it was pretty empty and I could see this saleslady staring us down. But Geoff said "give it a try" so we did. Sure enough she jumped on us the minute we walked in. She took us all around and showed us all of her stuff. We didn't really like anything so we left. She said "well if you find something you like, come back to me because I can get ANYTHING and get it for less!!!"

Sunday we checked out some places but they weren't that great. We had really liked one at Dania Home the night before, so we went back to look at it again. It was a floor model, so it was an extra 20% off the already clearanced price. I said "let's go back to Sharon (the saleslady at Urban Home) and see if she can get it cheaper". I really didn't think she'd be able to, but figured it was worth a try. We walked right up to her and she gave us a blank look for about 1.8 seconds and then recognized us! I asked her if she had Stanton and she said of course (I figured she did, they're a local place). After some going back and forth (certain colors are cheaper than others, etc), she's ordering us a BRAND NEW ONE for the same price as the floor model! The couch comes with an ottoman (at first she was like "there's no way that the ottoman was included in their price" - but when we told her that it was a floor model she understood), and the ottoman at Dania Home was a different color from the couch. The Dania couch was cream and the ottoman was brown - but Sharon is getting us a matching ottoman AND including some pillows. The ottoman is really exciting because it lifts up and you can store blankets (or whatever) in there. So if you're local and need furniture - go to Urban Home! Sharon is awesome. :-)

Here is a picture of the couch we are getting. Same colors (this is the stock color, which means they have pre-cut fabric which makes it cheaper), but the chaise lounge will be on the opposite side on ours. We are also getting the ottoman shown in the picture here - I am SO excited about the ottoman.

Edit: The first link to the couch seems to be a little weird. If it didn't work, you might try refreshing the page or clicking here: http://www.stantoninternational.com/Portals/0/UltraPhotoGallery/675/7/large/STANT_348_GAL.jpg
It does work, but it's just a little finnicky.

Now I am on a mission to find the perfect ottoman tray to turn it into more of a coffee table. We went to Pottery Barn, JC Penney, JC Penney Furniture, Macy's, Target, and Pier 1 a few weeks ago looking for one but we couldn't find any. I have a gift card to Pottery Barn so my preference is to buy it there. I don't shop there much otherwise so this is a perfect thing to use it on. I'm leaning towards this Bradford Tray (I didn't see it in the store, but I might try another so I don't have to pay for shipping. I'll call around).

I was also on a pillow mission but I think that is done now. I adore this really bright pillow from Crate and Barrel and some of these various colors to go with it, but c'mon, who pays $30 for ONE throw pillow? I am going to keep my eye on those to see if they go on clearance. In the meantime however, we found some GREAT pillows at Costco. They're not completely the color scheme I was envisioning, but they are quite a few different colors and they're really nice pillows. Plus they were the most reasonably priced of anywhere we looked (Target, Kohl's, Nordstrom Rack, Ross, etc.). I had no idea throw pillows were so expensive. That is lame. My fabulous mother-in-law is going to teach me how to make pillows too so I can make my own fantastic brightly colored pillows. YAY.

Back to the sectional... two days after we had made the purchase, we got a thank you note in the mail from Sharon at Urban Home, thanking us for our purchase and choosing Urban Home instead of Dania Home. THAT is why I love doing business with local shops! (I'm not by any means opposed to large corporate conglomerations, but local is nice sometimes) I love Sharon.

Then this morning Geoff sends me this article. The gist is that Stanton (which is located in Tualatin, about 25 minutes from where we live) shut down for Christmas break and never restarted production. YIKES!!!! I had commented to Geoff before we bought from Urban Home something along the lines of "I hope this works out, with places shutting down right and left these days, you never know who's going to be in business tomorrow". I meant the STORE though, not the manufacturing plant. Geoff called Urban Home and they said that someone DID buy Stanton and they are back in production. Geoff asked if that will delay delivery of our couch, and they said they don't expect it to but they will call Stanton to find out for sure and get back to us. So we'll see. Maybe we'll get a couch, maybe we won't. :-)

This is a long entry for a couch, a tray, and some throw pillows. But what can I say... I'm REALLY EXCITED FOR IT!!!!! Geoff said "you're going to have buyer's remorse for sure" (I always do... I so despise spending money). But I didn't! I had no idea I wanted a new couch, but I really do! I'm so excited!!

And if this one doesn't work out, there's always this couch that Geoff found.