Goodbye Dusty Rose...

When we first moved into our house, long before any demo, our living room was where we spent most of our time.  Here are two pictures of our first night (hence the pizza box and and my work bins all over the couches)  But the important things to note here are, in fact, the couches.

We call her Dusty Rose

Tons of seating space right??

Fast forward two years to this Halloween...my sister, bro-in-law and my parents decided to come to my house to hand candy out to the wee ones.  Here's how the living room looked before they arrived...

The problem?  No where to sit!  My family is often over, so I wasn't worried about the mess on the floor, that could be (and was) easily pushed to the oppsite side of the room, but I did want somewhere decent for them to sit.  I figured since the walls were all painted, the floors were all down, maybe I could actually start to bring some furniture out of storage!  Darryl was away for work, so I asked my dad if he would mind giving me a hand when he came over.  Before everyone arrived, I went into the mudroom where the couch had been stored for over a year to clear a path and tear all the protective plastic dust-covering drop cloths off. 

I thought I'd get a head start and at least bring all the cushions in.  After lifting a few up, this is what I saw...

 

HORROR!!!!!!!!!  Apparently our 91 year old mudroom is not mouse proof and last winter they must have sought haven in our couch arms.  At first I thought they'd just gotten warm under the cushions - that would be manageable with a good clean.  But after a closer look I saw this...

Clearly they have tunneled and nested all the way inside the couch!  Needless to say I opened the door to my family arriving on Halloween with tears in my eyes for several reasons:

1.  We would have to buy a new couch... $$$$!

2.  I wanted a nice, comfy (albeit pink) place for my family, and preggers sister, to sit!

3.  Only one or two short months prior to this I had convinced Darryl to put the old black leather couch to the curb as it had suffered during much of the demo phase.

How did we go from 2 couches to none!?

Luckily my family worked with me and we all enjoyed our night, despite being sat on various camping chairs, stools, benches and kitchen chairs.

While we never loved the look of our inherited pink couch, it offered a heck of a lot of seating space, and it was pretty darn comfy.  We did not think we would be buying a new couch for a good year or two.  But after clearing our family out of hand-me-down couches, we realized we were going to have to bite the bullet much sooner than we had anticipated.

Last weekend we spent a day shopping at all of the usual stores, Leons, the Brick, United Furniture, to name a few.  I learned that 1. couches are pretty expensive, and 2. man those stores sell a lot of dated-looking couches!  Nothing in our price range suited our style, so we headed down to IKEA, and the couch gods must have been watching over us because it was the last weekend of their couch sale!  Buy one get one 50% off!

I had been loving on the Karlstad series for some time (or as Darryl calls it "Karl's Dad"), I like the straight lines they have.  Darryl wasn't sure about the quality, sturdiness and comfort, so we decided to go do a little sit-test.  We loved it!  So we bought a love seat and chaise lounge attachment...and then found out the chaise lounges were out of stock.  So we had to drive back later this week to pick it up, but hopefully we'll have an assembled couch to share soon!

Have a lovely weekend!!

Any couches in your future?  What do you look for in a "good" couch  (price, style, comfort)?