sofa, so good

Having replaced our mattress, the next item on our household renewal program was our living room sofa. The existing one was old and getting ratty; and it was too soft and enclosing of aging bones. Though the cushions went up to 19 inches off the ground when unoccupied, if you sat in them they sank to 15 inches. Sometimes I had trouble struggling my way out.

Our epiphany occurred while sitting in Sherwood's sofa on our visit there. It was comfortable! The seats were high, and while soft you didn't sink into them. It was closer to the condition of a really comfy chair. We didn't want exactly that model, but it would be a starting point. S's P. gave us info on the store, which turned out to be a chain that doesn't exist in our area, and when I found the particular sofa on their web site, it was a house brand. But it was a start.

It meant that when I started combing through our local sofa stores' web catalogs, it was easier to dismiss what we didn't want, and few had anything that fit our desires. But there was one dealer that had several promising-looking models, and their Yelp reviews were sterling. So we contacted them a couple weeks ago.

Oh boy. I'll spoil the ending right now by telling you that everything turned out OK, but if it hadn't been for those sterling Yelp reviews we would have run away screaming. It wasn't a sofa store. It was one guy in his 20s running a furniture-sales business out of the garage in the suburban house he shared with his mother and two brothers. The garage, which had a few sample chair and sofa segments along the walls and a huge pile of distributor catalogs on the tables, was shared with his brother's motorcycle, and there were dog turds all over the lawn.

The young furniture magnate, while friendly, did not seem a real master of his repertoire, but he was able to look up the models that B. had identified from his web site as likely candidates, find one that was in stock (useful, as later I read an article about the supply chain disasters in furniture), take my credit card, and set a delivery date with the promise that delivery would be on approval and we'd have a few minutes to try it out, since we couldn't see it before buying it.

Delivery was today. First it was going to be 11-3. Then they called and said it'd be 3-7. They showed up at 7. Oh boy. But the sofa, which is a rough grey fabric which the cats can't do much harm to, is 18 inches high (the same height as some of our chairs) and while comfy does not sink, so it'll be good to sit in. And that's what we want a sofa for, right?