Furniture - West Burlington,IA

Micro fiber is nice but you still have to clean it and sometimes the spots show up.

Leather is nice BUT the leather I've seen recently, in the last 10 years or so, isn't sturdy. My father in law is in his 80's and lives alone. He bought a good quality leather couch and love seat from a good long term family furniture store and within a few months where he sits is worn looking. He's a thin man too. It's discolored and worn. It looks awful.

Fabric vacuums, can be taken off and washed if everything else fails, and if you get a rug doctor with attachments you can clean it extremely well.

I spent $1800-$2000 and got a 3 cushion couch, a wide chair and ottoman, and a love seat. It is Ashley and Basil colored. I'll add a link to show you which set. I am not fond of the paisley pattern pillows but I still use them. I got solid dark sage green drapes that are complete good match with the furniture but just shades darker. So they really compliment each other.

This is the couch

http://www.walkersfurniture.com/item.aspx?itemid=12222949...

This one has all 4 pieces in the photos

http://www.shopknies.com/furniture/living-room/ottomans/7...

The deal we got was buy one and get a second piece for half price. So the couch was around $750 and we got the love seat half price, I can't remember how much it was. Then we got the chair and the ottoman was half price.

All the pieces have withstood much use. We don't allow the kids to bring food out of the kitchen and eating areas so we've been lucky with no huge spills. I have a rug doctor and can clean it if I need to but so far it's been awesome.

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As for study groups...I hate having to hold my stuff in my lap and try to be comfortable and see everyone. So I'd rather have something in front of me, like a table, where I'm studying something. If I am physically going to manage in my lap I'd rather sit at a table or have a TV tray that I can use to write in a notebook or lay out my highlighters/coloring tools, and the book. It's really awkward to do this without sitting at tables.

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Extra seating for larger groups.

We bought folding chairs at Staples, they were about $40 each. They are heavy duty and look like wood dining room chairs. Very nice, cushioned seat, and fold up nicely.

http://www.globalindustrial.com/p/office/chairs/folding/e...

They had them in stock in the store so we could go in and buy one or two when ever we needed them. They've been there and been the same for years now. That can change of course but so far we have about 10 of them and it's nice. We can take them with us to a friends house for a party, we can pull them out on the deck, they can be used for people that drop by when all the furniture is full, etc...it's very handy to have folding chairs that look so nice and are comfortable.

We have a living room that is mainly a conversation/family/game room. It does have a TV but is not our main one (that's downstairs in rec room) and we have a little den with one too. When kids are a little older, I'll get rid of TV in this room altogether (I just use for youngest so I can keep an eye on them).

We looked at sectionals (which I love and grew up with) but it's hard to find a big enough one that fits a lot of people. The ones that have the right angle corner in them are a bit awkward sometimes. No one likes to sit in the corner (unless you're watching TV), and you're more crowded than if you went with 2 separate couches. I like them more in TV viewing rooms.

We like the look of a sectional but wanted the extra room, so we got two couches (couches are almost the same price as loveseats, so if you need the seating room, I'd go with couches) and have them at right angles to each other. Looks like a sectional without losing a corner. I have a little table with a lamp on it where the two meet up.

Then I have two big comfy armchairs across from the couches so it's like a circle if that makes sense. Eight people can sit in this arrangement - six very comfortably.

I also have a bench up against one wall that we can swing out in a pinch. And we have a piano in there, so if push comes to shove, we use the piano bench too.

One of my couches turns into a chaise/sofa. So you swap out one end seat cushion for a long cushion, and push up the ottoman, and you have a chaise at one end of couch. We do this if we don't have anyone over. The extra cushion hides behind the other couch. I like this for reading or watching TV.

I have had microfiber, leather and most recently we got a thicker microfiber almost corduroy fabric. In chocolate. It's by far my favorite. The microfiber (even though good quality) looked worn earlier than I thought it should. It was super easy to clean though. Wipe with damp cloth, and spills or marks were gone.

The leather ... wasn't fussy about. My mother has very expensive and it is buttery soft. Very comfortable. We scrimped a bit and our leather is harder. I like it but not as comfortable. It also scratched .. My favorite is the nubby corduroy fabric. It shows nothing and has worn very well. Something with texture seems to wear well.

I bought a Rowe (?) sofa (think that's what it is called) and it is very comfortable. Has worn well.

A good square table (best with a lid that opens up) to store games and puzzles is great. I have a huge basket for blankets/nice throws. A gallery wall (we have really nice shelves with a large selection of photos of the family and pets) is a really nice addition to a conversation room. Plants!

Cozy rug :) We have cushions too. Kids like to sit on the floor around the coffee table when playing cards.

Good luck on the move and purchase of house :) hope you find what you are looking for!

All but a handful of our furnishings are from IKEA. We bought their L shaped Karlstadt leather sofa, and have two of their ecktorp jennylund chairs. It works for us. the chairs have held up well. We don't allow food into the living room and don't let animals on the furniture.

Our home is under 1000 square feet. In its current configuration, we've had as many as 7 adults and 3 children there at once and it felt OK.

LSHA

Best,
F. B.

It sounds like you want something that will encourage conversation. You might try a solid color couch with a large square coffee table in front with several chairs on the other side in sort of a semi circle. I usually go to the house site www.Houzz.com or hgtv.com to look at pictures of layouts or room designs. I would have a large square coffee table so you could share a meal or play a board game.

I've never regretted buying GOOD leather furniture.
Decide what amount you can afford & keep an eye out for sales.

Congratulations on your new home! How exciting!

We have bought alot of furniture over the years - being married more than 20 years and I was on my own for 10 years before that. Upholstered furniture is tough becuase if it's not good quality you'll end up with craters where people sit most often, the foam cusions compress and it just looks shoddy too fast. 20 years ago we bought a couch and loveseat from Castro (no longer in business) and they lasted forever. The loveseat had been in our basement for years and we only gave it away recently. It lasted through cats, babies, and a few moves. In between that time we had a couch and chair/ottoman and most recently we got rid of a sectional that was just poorly made. I really like sectionals - but they can be difficult in many rooms - you can't rearrange the furniture often times, etc.

When we were young and broke we bought a couch and loveseat - since a loveseat is about the same cost as a chair and offers more seating. But that can also be difficult and won't always fit a room well. When we moved from a huge apartment to our first little house the couch and loveseat barely fit in the living room. We now have a looong couch (had an extra secion put in) with a chaise at one end (my TV & reading spot), a chair with an ottoman and a recliner. We will only get a coffee table that has storage - drawers, a shelf underneath. And we also have a storage ottoman against a wall in the corner that contains all our board games.

For us, a couch and chairs are easier to reconfigure if needed. Becuase our long couch has an inserted section we can remove it if needed. We consdiered leather but didn't get it becuase the cats just want to claw at it. We used to have a leather chair - but they battered that thing. If you get fabric that's rubber backed the cats can't damage it.

Also what we found that's new over the last 5 years is that most often the cushions are no longer reversible and only have nice fabric on one side. We made the mistake of buying a sectional made like this at a clearance center. It wasn't well made and within a year it was sagging in places and we couldn't flip the cushions. We learned to keep the "company side" down while we live on it and flip them over for company. It's worked over the years. But it's really tough now to find furniture like that. We ended up buying our new furniture at LazyBoy - and we love it. We upgraded a few things becuase we really don't want to buy another couch or loveseat anytime soon. We plan on retiring in 5 years so this will last us hopefully at least 10 years. With one kid in college and the other in HS we no longer have children abusing our furniture eother. We really like Lazyboy - they had a lot of options and we spent more than $5K on the couch, chair & ottoman (the recliner was from a few years ago).

I'm with other posts here - it's better to buy good pieces as you can afford them than to buy a room full of crappy furniture that will only look good and feel comfortable for 2-3 years.

We lived without a dining room table for years (we put card tables and masonite board together and covered with a tablecloth) and only bought one when I stopped at a garage sale. I got a Thomasville pedestal table with two leaves and 4 chairs for $500. It would have been easily $1750 in the store.

I did find that Costco furniture isn't a bad deal and some of it is really good quality - of course, you can't slelect fabric and the options are limited but they offer much better prices. I almost bought a sectional last Summer from them but by the time we went back to get it it was sold out! If you want it you have to move fast.

My last suggestion - depending on what your husband is like when he shops - maybe go yourself first and check out a number of stores. Where I live there's an area where all the furniture stores are within a mile on this one strip. One year I went first round with my husband and he was hungry and wanted to go to lunch - that's when we settled on that horrible sectional that was already in awful shape only a year later. While I planned on going to many stores that day, taking notes and coming to ao conclusion after much consideration, he jsut wanted to get it over with. I've since learned to go out by myself first. Get ideas, see what's what at different stores, do a littel window shopping (so to speak) and when the sales people get pushy you simply say you ahve to come back with your husband. We did so much better this way - my DH wasn't impatient, I already had an idea of where to go. So much better an idea!

Anyway - good luck mama! Have fun decoratint and feathering your new nest!

Heidi is right. Put your room on graph paper. Each square on the paper represents 12 inches (1 foot). So if your room is 10 ft x 10 ft, You would draw the walls, (as if you were looking down from the sky onto the house without the roof on ) making the square 10 squares high by 10 squares wide. You would also mark were the doors and windows/fireplace are. If you check out a book from the library on interior design it will show you how to do this. I have laid out my garden, my house, even my barns, using this method. When I wanted to move around my bedroom furniture, I first laid out what I wanted to do on graph paper, and because of that, I realized it wouldn't work. Saved myself a lot of time moving all the heavy furniture only to move it back.

A great way to get in some extra furniture is to have a side table/entry type table that has an open bottom. under this open bottom, you can slide two matching square footstools, or one long bench.

Do you live near a Nebraska Furniture Mart? I see you're in Iowa and there is one in Iowa. There is also one in Kansas City and Omaha. We lived in KC for a while and always had good luck at Nebraska Furniture Mart. They have a HUGE selection and lots of variation on price/quality. For example, you can get a kids bedroom set (bunkbeds, dresser, night stand) for $4000 and you can a set for $600. One is solid wood made by Bassett and the other is particle board with a metal bed frame.

A configuration that works well for one person may not work well at all for your space. The things that will dictate what will work best for your use of the space and for it to be properly scaled are room dimensions, openings, door swings, windows, window heights, ceiling height, and traffic patterns.
Try to draw up the room on graph paper and cut out some representational shapes for various types of furniture ( to scale) and play around with some configurations and sizes. It does not have to be pretty (the drawing that is). You just need to make sure things fit nicely. You can worry about style, fabrics, and so forth when you know what you are looking for. Don't forget to sketch in a few lines to show traffic patterns, like for example if the room opens up to another room, you want everything to flow nicely.

And from experience I can tell you the number one mistake people make when buying furniture, is not knowing the layout before hand and assuming they will magically figure out where to place things and or assuming the pieces will fit. But let me tell you, I've had to spend hours looking for a chair or a table that was 2" narrower here and 2" less deep there just to make everything fit well. It can come down to inches when you really want the space to work well. But sadly, I've seen people buy sets where they could scarcely fit 3 of the 5 nonreturnable pieces.
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For myself personally, I used a local furniture maker to make my living room pieces. One was to make a knock off of a designer chair because I loved the lines but didn't want to pay $4000 a chair. I also had my sofa made custom because i had three ottomans made so that it turns into a bed. We use two of the ottomans regularly and store the other near by under a medium size table. This did not cost me one penny more than buying ready- made. I just had to wait 8 weeks. I had seen the idea in another furniture store, but simply needed to customize it to be more flexible.

Google "conversation pit sofa" for some cool ideas that may or may not work well in your space. Good luck

happy drawing!
(forgot to mention I'm an NCIDQ certified interior designer)

Congratulations on your new house!

We have a very large, open area with kitchen and family room. We love leather furniture and our family room set is a couch, chair, loveseat and 2 ottomans. The breakfast table that is in the kitchen area is custom made Amish 84x48 and also serves as a great area for conversation. I also have a huge island in the kitchen area with small bar stools that are used a lot.

I know it is hard to visualize but along the far wall in my family room the fireplace is centered. The room is very large. We have 2 identical cherry wood entertainment centers with 2 identical Sony Bravia TV's. When we are watching ballgames, etc, we have the 2 TV's on so everyone can see well. It is pretty cool and unique. It is also fun to have each TV on different channels sometimes so you can catch 2 favorite shows!

Our formal dining is custom made Amish cherry wood 84x48 large table. The formal living is custom made leather sofa, love seat and handmade Oriental rug. The leather in the formal area came from Leather Sofa Company. You pick the style, leather, softness, firmness of the cushions, etc. All of the Amish furniture came from Amish Furniture Store where you see a style you like, order the piece, have it stained however you want and they hand make it for you. It is beautiful.

When we moved to this house we did not have furniture to fill it up. We moved from about 2000 SF to 4000SF. The LAST thing I wanted to do was to go buy furniture simply to fill it up. We took our time, bought high quality and custom pieces when we would find such a treasure.

I would advise to take your time and not rush any purchases. I'm a "you get what you pay for person" and I'd rather spend $5000 ONE time on a quality piece of furniture vs having to buy furniture again and again that is cheaper and does not hold up well. In the end, when you cheap you have to keep replacing worn out furniture which means over time, you probably will spend $5000 when you could have spend that $5000 just once.

Now, in our daughter's condo we bought last year, she chose a fabric sectional from Rooms to Go for her living area. This sectional is in a lot of the ads on TV as well. It is very versatile and she loves it. It fits her living area perfectly and has held up well. I think we paid about $3500 for it.

Have fun shopping, decorating and planning!

ETA: Go to high end stores to look and get ideas. A few years ago, we were kindof shopping for a bed frame for our daughter. We happened to see this massive beautiful solid cherry wood headboard and frame. She fell in love with it immediately and said, "that's the one". I was scared to look at the price tag BUT..... This piece alone was marked $2500 and we got it for $400 because of the size, it was too big for most bedrooms and they were taking a loss on it to get rid of it. It worked perfectly for us for her bedroom upstairs which about the size of a nice Master and it fits perfectly at the condo in her bedroom.

I have no regrets on any of the purchases I have made for the quality furniture in our home.

You have a lot of choices out there. I don't know your style - modern? Traditional? Low-back? High-back?

If you are having a conversation room - you need comfortable chairs, alternative seating (love the tables that acts as seats) something like this:
https://s.yimg.com/fz/api/res/1.2/jmwGxsGsPnnTeM2cf1wWgw-...

I personally love sectionals - however - for conversations? A long couch with two or more chairs would be better for conversation. But there is something like this:
http://www.wayfair.com/Bauhaus-Lawrence-Sectional-HBX1301...

To recycle/upcycle? I would check out Goodwill...you can find good pieces there sometimes.

We spent some good money on our black leather set. It took us 8 years to find it. We got it on sale and good negotiating - sofa, love seat and recliner for $4,100.

For me? while I don't like the furniture style - this is the set up I would see for a "conversation room" without a TV

http://www.homelement.com/Coaster-Furniture-Montbrook-Sof...