More New Furniture!

A few weeks ago I received a catalog from Bassett Furniture--Pottery Barn-like styles, but fully customizable and with a lot more fabric choices. In the catalog was a 20% coupon. Who doesn't love 20% off furniture!!! D and I took a drive out to where I used to work to visit the showroom and check it out. On the way we stopped at Mitchell Gold & Bob Williams furniture which we liked, but it was out of our budget.

So, we went to Bassett and were greeted right away by this woman Laura. She had asked what we were looking for and what styles we liked and then set us to work sketching out the room. D sketched out the room (we have the dimensions to memory now) and Laura guessed immediately that D is an engineer. Laura gave me some nice ideas about the room (like putting a runner in front of the sliding glass door for the winter), and then we sat on some different pieces of furniture to get a sense of scale and comfort. First we tried their "Estate" collection sofa. The thing was huge! It would look great in our room, but we looked like Baby Bears sitting in Papa Bear's chair. Then we tried the "Manor" collection which was much more scaled to us. The sofa is 92" long, so it's big, but the depth of the cushions and overall proportions are better.

D and I have been trying to decide between a sectional or a sofa and loveseat. After Laura put both options into the room plan, we decided a sofa and loveseat and a chair was the way to go. The other thing I had been trying to decide on was whether to do a coffee table or an ottoman. We decided to go with a storage ottoman--today it'll be a place to store magazines, knitting, etc. and someday it will store some of the kids' toys. Another plus is that the future kids won't crack their heads open banging against the edges of a coffee table.

Our future kids were a big impact on the furniture we decided to buy. It had to be durable in construction, and it had to have fabric that would stand up to lots of wear. We decided on a light brown/tan corduroy-like fabric. Very durable, but also very soft. We purcased the sofa, loveseat, chair, and ottoman all in the same fabric. It's matchy-matchy and boring, but I think from a longevity standpoint it will work well. The fun was picking the fabric for the throw pillows. I'm a big believer in neutral furniture that can adapt to my changing tastes just by changing the throw pillows. The throw pillows I chose are not what I would have expected--they're sort of Kilim inspired. They have a bunch of different colors in them (burnt orange, sage, brick red, denim blue) which I think will work really well with different seasonal accents (e.g., pumpkins in the fall and evergreens in the winter). They're very warm looking, so I think during the spring and summer I will switch them out for something lighter. Here's the website's rendering of our sofa with the throw pillows (the sofa color is darker in the picture than in real life).

Now I'm going to be on the lookout for lamps, an area rug and runner, and accessories! I'm thinking wrought iron or dark bronze for lamps and curtain rods. We're also going to move the mission-style revolving bookcase Dad built for me into the family room. I'm going to try to find an adjustable-arm desk-style lamp to put on top of it so it will be a good task light for reading/knitting on the couch. I also need to find an end table for between the sofa and the chair, and a lamp to go on it. For the short term, I'm sure one of the 5 end tables D and I own (all hand-me-downs) will work. We've also got to decide on some sort of entertainment center, but in the meantime we'll keep using the awesome oak armoire that D's friend Jim made. Who knows--maybe it'll be a permanent fixture stained to match the revolving bookcase. Would be nice to have additional storage though...

Now D and I just have to wait for the furniture to arrive. Laura said it would arrive before Thanksgiving, but I'm not counting on it. Of course it would be great if it did since we'll have 9-12 people at our house for Turkey Day and currently have family room seating for 4!

Stay tuned for postings of different accessories, lamps, rugs, etc. that I'll be looking at! I'll also be posting bedroom decorating ideas too as time goes on.