This past weekend Michael and I did some furniture shopping.
With my new job I’ll be telecommuting 80-90% of the time, which meant that we had to re-arrange the house a bit. Right now Michael and I share an office, he telecommutes 60% of the time and I work in an office, which is fine, but I’ll be the first to admit that we’d probably kill each other if we were both telecommuting and sharing that office. As much as I love him, I don’t think there are many couples who could survive that!
So Michael worked out a plan:
Current setup: Huge upstairs room is office for Michael and me, one downstairs bedroom functions as TV room
Future Setup: Upstairs office for Michael and functions as TV room, I have downstairs bedroom as my office
We figured we’d just haul our current furniture upstairs from the TV room and be done with it. But then Michael got to discussing new furniture. We were planning on buying a nice couch and loveseat – so why not do it now before we start lugging furniture we’re getting rid of anyway all over the house?
The upstairs is a tricky place to get furniture into, the door is non-standard size, on the small side, and the narrow stairway comes to the top at a slanted ceiling (our tall friends routinely bump their heads). Finding furniture that we could get up there would be an adventure.
First we stopped by Stanley’s Furniture in Harleysville. Their location has a warehouse feel to it (no windows, big ceilings, probably is an old warehouse…). Their prices were reasonable but we weren’t impressed with their use of contractors to deliver furniture (or their high delivery prices), plus we quickly came to the conclusion that only a couple of them would actually fit upstairs (Michael didn’t like my idea of using a crane to put the furniture in while we were having our roof replaced this spring – hahaha). Dejected, we got in the car and started going home, which is when Michael thought of Futons.
“We need something that we can assemble upstairs. Maybe a Futon couch?” Michael suggested.
“Turn here, there is a mattress store in this plaza that sells Futons,” I replied.
So we made the turn into the shopping plaza that had Harleysville Mattress. This is where things all came together.
The Futon couch frames they sell these days are quite nice, with prices in the range of traditional couches, and the Futon mattress types are a much more comfortable assortment than their predecessors. Plus, they’re easy to fold down into beds – we’d finally have guest beds! Our house only has three bedrooms, and with two of them being used for offices we don’t just don’t have to room for a dedicated guest room, and these nice looking futons are the perfect answer to the traditional uncomfortable fold out couches.
So we bought two of these, but with a dark cherry stain and a brown “espresso” suede-like cover. They are traditional full size beds and simply fold up into a couch. The tray arm is a nice bonus too everyone would have a place to put their drink!
The salesman was wonderful. When we arrived at the store he didn’t hover and pester us, he was very helpful when we finally asked for his help. When we made our decision he was pleasant and supportive of our decision (it’s always nice to say how smart your customer is for their choices). When all was said and done he even gave us close to 20% off for buying the two of them (no, I’m not that naive, of course the salesmen have the power to do such things to impress customers, the actual sticker prices are probably never paid). It was a wonderful buying experience and when we buy a new bed in the near future you better believe we’ll be shopping there again. Great service, price and supporting a local business; what could be better?
Since it’s a small, local store pretty much everything is special ordered. We are getting everything we wanted delivered to our house in 2 weeks. We set up for a Saturday morning delivery on February 10th. The delivery is free, by people employed by the store (no contractors), and they’ll even bring them to the room you want them in and assemble them!
I’m so excited!