Picking A New Sofa

I finally pulled the trigger and placed an order for a new sofa for our upstairs living room.  We have needed to replace the old Ikea sofa that is currently in here for years.  I know it doesn't look terrible in most of the pictures on this blog, but believe me when I say that that is just magical blog photography smoke & mirrors.  Here is what I can get it to look like after adjusting ALL of the pillows and then giving it a bit of help in Photoshop.

And here is what it looks like the rest of the time.  Actually, this isn't accurate.  Usually there are TWO goldens sleeping on it.  And the back pillows usually sag more.

It is a really comfortable sofa and so we have lived with the sloppiness.  I love that I can just throw the slipcover in the washer with some bleach and make it fresh.  This slipcover is 5 years old and it does have some light stains but nothing too noticeable.  And I would continue to live with the messy if it wasn't for the fact that we need another sofa for a new space in the house.

My husband and son have been working on finishing a portion of our basement as a sort of "teen cave".   It is completely their project and I haven't had the time (or the will if I am being honest) to get involved much at all.  My son wants the old Ikea sofa from the living room in the new space.  I offered him the leather sofas from our family room, but he said NO THANKS.  Have I mentioned that no one in our house enjoys the leather sofas in our family room?  So this fall I found myself looking for a new living room sofa.

Here's my checklist of what the new sofa has to be:
1. Slipcovered in a light (but not white) fabric
2.  Comfortable, but well sized for the room (meaning not too big)
3.  Affordable

I began to research and visit furniture stores.  It was a welcome distraction these last few weeks.  These are a few of the top contenders.

The Pottery Barn Carlisle.  Exactly the style I was going for, but with a pretty big price tag.  I liked that there were a couple of sizes to choose from and we thought it was comfortable when we sat on it in the store.  This sofa was our first runner up.

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The Crate and Barrel Willow sofa.  It wasn't the look of this sofa that got me, but rather the comfort.  And it is a smaller scale which would work well for our smaller space.  Ultimately, it wasn't the style I was going for, but boy was it comfy.

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Of course, we took a trip to Ikea to sit on the Stocksund sofa.  We already have the chair and the Stocksund would certainly be the most affordable choice, but it lacked the comfort and plushness we had felt on other sofas.  One bonus would have been the availability of slipcovers right at our local Ikea.  The cover on our chair is holding up so well that I would have been happy to have that fabric on a sofa too.  We decided against the Stocksund for this purchase.

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We finally decided on a sofa from Birch Lane.  Lately, I have been loving their catalogs.  I just adore their casual and comfortable style.  I thought that the Montgomery slipcovered sofa was just what we were looking for at a great price point.  Of course, the hardest thing about ordering from a catalog is not being able to sit on the furniture to try it out.  There were several great reviews of this sofa and we are keeping our fingers crossed that we are happy with it.  We were able to order some fabric swatches and we picked an oatmeal colored fabric.  It should be arriving this week!

I can't wait to show you our new sofa just in time for holiday decorating!