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How Long will You Wait to Get The Sofa You Want?

By 06/12/2014January 28th, 201729 Comments

I once helped a client decorate her guest room. She wanted everything NOW. The painting had to happen IMMEDIATELY! The furniture, delivered YESTERDAY.

In my experience, there are two types of clients who want furniture that fast.

When you move into a new house and you don’t have any furniture to sit on, that has people get pretty impatient for new stuff, RIGHT NOW.

Second, the client who cannot decide. They don’t want to make a mistake so they wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And put up with old, bad, and cheap for a very long time.
cheap and fast is not good

Then, when they finally decide.

They don’t want to wait.

Anymore.

They’re done with bad and ugly and they want pretty and they want it RIGHT NOW.

Schillig

Well with Schillig Furniture, your furniture will arrive in less than 16 weeks and their sofas start at $2,500.

The price goes up depending on the custom features that you add. For instance, their motion collections feature two different seat widths of 26 inches and 30 inches and offer over 50 different skus.

base

Most can be done either as a plain seat or as a tufted seat.  Many of their stationary products also feature deep sku assortments.  If you take a look at the Imagine series (above), it offers 9 different arms, 8 different legs, 3 different tailoring options, 3 seat widths, and 2 different seat comforts, as well as over 50 different skus.

Their furniture is hand crafted from solid hardwoods and CARB P2 compliant hardwood, plywood non-toxic foams, they still corner block, double dowel, screw and staple their frames and that equals a product that will provide years of comfort and family enjoyment.

When you think about the singular cost of buying a sofa or sectional, if you spend a little more money on quality and you break down the price over the many years you will own it, it’s so much better than the instant gratification of an inexpensive sofa purchased at a big box store and delivered the next day!

52387-allie

 

Did you know that this sofa is actually a recliner? But it doesn’t look like a regular recliner which is why they call it their motion collection instead.

Motion
52451-elba
Wouldn’t two or three of these (above) be so great in a media room? Depending on how big your media room is of course.
So before you do something rash and rush out to buy a sofa just because you’ve finally decided on the colour or just because you don’t have a place to sit right this minute. . .
Look at your space.
Decide exactly how you want to use it and who’s going to sit where.
And custom design a sofa that will make you so happy every time you sit down.
And, I’m doing a poll. What was the least expensive sofa you ever bought and the most expensive?
*This is a High Point sponsored post. All opinions are my own.
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29 Comments

  • t wright says:

    May I please hijack the photo with the cheap & fast = not good?? I think that’s a great quote and have found it to be true soooo many times.
    As to the most/least $$ sofas;
    Most $$: 23 yrs ago when motion sectional sofas were not to be found….. about $2,300 if memory serves. Fast forward 10 yrs…. I was so very tired of it but couldn’t justify the cost in my mind for only 10 yrs.use, five yrs later I finally ordered a custom sofa and chair with custom slips and I still think it’s great.
    Least $$ is easy: It’s the one I’m currently trying to replace at our beach cottage. Paid $50 for the gently used sleeper sofa from a friend 16 yrs ago, added a slip from Pottery Barn, on sale for $80 and it’s been the best/only furniture bargain I’ve ever found!
    When I finish your book and finally try to choose a color to paint the walls I’ll decide what to replace it with. Windows are in, trim up but needs paint as well….. it may be a while yet. I’ve been enjoying your sofa posts though and they’ve certainly been timely for me! As have the kitchen backsplash/counter posts! It’s beadboard same color as trim, solid color quartz counters, old lightly whitewashed pine floors, (I think they’re salvageable..?) for now. Wish me luck, I’ll keep reading and maybe won’t need it. Thanks for all the information!

  • Jennifer says:

    The cheapest? $100 for a sofa from a model home. It had only been in the house 3 days and then for some reason, the builder had all the furniture put up for auction and they re-styled the house. Strange, but good for me.

    Right now I have an IKEA Ektorp with a white slip cover. I like the fact that I can wash, or when the time comes, replace the slip cover. With pets and nieces and nephews, I couldn’t justify spending alot on something that would end up with claw marks or chocolate ice cream on it.

    I changed the legs and no one thinks it’s IKEA.

    PS. If you have kids or are just spill-prone, a trick for furniture with removable cushion covers or slip covers is to put disposable bed pads under the cushion covers or slip cover. You can find them with the diapers at most grocery/big box stores. Then if anything is spilled, it won’t soak into the cushions. A bonus is that my cat doesn’t like them, so she’s mostly stopped scratching the couch.

  • Jill Baum says:

    I had 2 gorgeous tapestry sofas that I paid $900/pr. I loved those sofas but they almost caused us a divorce. After those I bought a Kreiss sectional used on Craigslist (desperation!) Had it cleaned and the stains reappeared, feathers bursting out etc. Hubby had all kinds of criteria for the new one. I sent him into my favorite store and he chose the one I thought he would (they only had 4.) We got it the next day and when he laid on it his butt went right into the center crack! Thankfully I had bought so many things from this store they came and picked it up. 2 weeks later I went back and found the absolute perfect sofa with slipcovers and a bench cushion. PS. I want it YESTERDAY!

  • I couldn’t agree more with your statement Maria, “if you spend a little more money on quality and you break down the price over the many years you will own it, it’s so much better than the instant gratification of an inexpensive sofa purchased at a big box store and delivered the next day!”

    Working with clients who keep buying cheap and then wonder why it doesn’t last can be frustrating sometimes. Which is true to more than just furniture. I really like the way you worded it (above).

    Thanks for another great post.

  • bfish says:

    Fun question — honestly I’ve never bought a real sofa (and I started buying “nice” furniture at least 35 years ago) until less than 2 years ago. In the interim I was given one which I had reupholstered (over 30 years ago) and a few years after that bought a sofa bed for a den. Up until we remodeled our living room, relocating the entry doors so we could have a flat screen TV, there was no place to make a full-size sofa work so for many years we relied on a love seat and chairs.

    When sofa-buying time finally came I was most interested in getting what I wanted and well aware that quality isn’t cheap. However we are fortunate that a major discounter of high end furniture (Green Front) is only an hour from our home, and it didn’t disappoint in this quest!

    We ended up with a Whittemore-Sherrill black leather sofa, with nailhead trim and tan leather piped cushions. (Yes, it’s very masculine but that’s fine with me and works in the room. We looked at many cool patterned fabric sofas and then came to our senses — “oh yeah, we have cats and dogs and we eat while sitting in our LR all the time”.) Since it was in the final closeout area the price was all the way down to $850; no kidding! The only thing wrong with it is it had been used for display so leather was slightly faded — made it look better to me than jet black anyway. I hope it’s going to last a very long time as I don’t think we could be so lucky again in finding the perfect combination of price, style, and functionality.

  • Robin says:

    I am the second sofa buyer. I have been waiting for 20 years and still not bought a new sofa.

  • Lorri Terkelsen says:

    Hi Maria,
    That is an interesting question that you pose. This is not an ad for this company but Dillard’s has provided me with excellent choices and I spent between $1,000 and $2,000 on each of the 4 sofa’s I’ve purchased for the 4 homes I have owned in my 36 year marriage. I did buy one from my son when they redecorated. They have all been good quality and held up nicely. I raised three sons. I find in the US the quality goes up dramatically between $700. and $1,000. I find Haverty’s have an excellent assortment in this range as well. My sofa’s have outlasted the homes I have lived in. I have only bought 2 kitchen table sets….wood never decays! These have not been able to adapt to the moves and I look at them for a long while in the wrong spot. My dining room set was my mothers and all I can do is thank God for bringing back mid-centry modern!

  • Pat says:

    The cheapest sofa, really loveseat, was free. It was left in a house I purchased and was covered with an ugly slipcover. I discovered what it really was when I stubbed my toe on the leg. Slipcover off and I saw I had an older, never did figure out the age or era, loveseat with marvelous carving around the base and legs. The money I spent was getting it reupholstered.
    I loved that loveseat. It moved many times with me. CA to NJ to FL to NJ and back to CA. I had to put it in storage with other household items when I arrived back in CA and didn’t see it again for a year.
    When I went to pick up my things I kept looking for the loveseat and asking. Finally they took me across the warehouse floor where it lay in a pile, shattered. They said it was dropped. It was beyond repair.
    I still look for it’s twin on Craigs List knowing it was probably a “one only” discovery. Also know it wouldn’t work as well with my current home decor. Still loving it.
    So goes my song to my favorite couch.

  • franki says:

    The wait…oh, how I have lived that!! Five years searching for the “right red” leather sofa…….Hancock & Moore. It will have to last a “life time!!” franki

  • KA says:

    My sofa is like the first one without the headrest. In black/charcoal. It has slightly different legs. I saw a similar one in a Roche Bobois ad and when I went and saw it at Maurice Villency in Manhattan, it was $10,000! Filled with down! With bun feet! Well, no way was I going to buy that because I think down looks sloppy every time you sit on it. So when I went home for Thanksgiving, I saw an ad for a different company in the LA Times that had something very similar. They had a showroom a few blocks from my office in NYC. I went in and they were having a sale where you could get the highest quality leather for the worst quality price. Made without the feathers and a slightly different leg which I liked more. That was the size of a twin bed when you remove the cushions on the back and arms. For less than $2,200 in cetus leather not bonded leather because of the sale instead of $5,000+. No feathers for my cats to try to kill. I think I got it about 6-8 weeks later after it was made in the color I had chosen.

    The best deal was the Revers chairs I got on sale as floor samples. I saw them when I first moved to Manhattan at Cassina. When I went in after I found the store again (saw it in the window the 1st week I was in New York, but they changed the display) I learned each chair was $325. So much for that, I said. But I truly coveted them. So after I finished grad school and had gotten kittens, I switched jobs getting a 40% raise and saw Cassina was having a floor model sale. Went in, the prices had gone up to $550 each for new, but 1/2 off for floor models. Since they are wood, I bought two and walked home with one on each arm. It was about a 5-10 minute walk, and I had them after 4 years of wanting them. They are like sculptures and are surprisingly comfortable.

  • susan says:

    I bought a $3000 sofa and that was 26 years ago when $3000 was like today’s $10,000. I loved that sofa…so comfy…you may remember it, Maria in my condo in Victoria. Deep seating, cozy, ivory leather. At the time, my dream sofa. Then I moved into a house that had mice and they got into the sofa. When I left that house I gave the sofa away. I bought a make-shift (new) $700 sofa (only 4 years ago from Sears) and hated it. It was uncomfortable and narrow depth. Awful thing. It was meant to be temporary and was a waste of money. I sold it for $140 after 2 years. Now we don’t have one at all. Just 2 chairs. There isn’t room in the tree house where we leave at the moment so I’m waiting until we’re back in a house and then another great sofa will be mine.

  • sandyc says:

    My cheapest sofa was my first and it was free. I’d recently left a convent and started a job at $400 a month (back in 1968) and had practically nada. A coworker offered me a Danish modern sofa and chair she was ditching. It came in a butt-ugly brown and orange plaid complete with a chunk out of the front arm where she’d practice her golf swing in the house. My brilliant natural seamstress mother went to a discount fabric store and bought pale celery cut velvet for the couch and a lovely blue for the chair and created a couple of masterpieces (she wouldn’t let me pay for any of it, so it really was free). Most expensive was a lovely wine-colored leather loveseat with nailhead trim and rolled arms from LazyBoy which my husband and I got for about $800. Looked great in our Arizona room and since both my husband and I were vertically challenged, it was long enough and very comfortable to nap on. LazyBoy is showing comparable ones. not in leather, for over $1100 and $1200. Making do comfortably enough with a queen sleeper which we had with a slipcover. Basic color is a very pale yellow which is OK but it’s microfiber which is an instant cat hair magnet – before I cleaned it off and put on the slipcover, I sat down in practically 2″ of white cat hair from my 3 fuzzballs, Since my feline children will always be a part of my life, and since my aspens-they-could-be-birches artwork over the couch is the most important must-stay feature of my LR, any new couch will take a great deal of thought re materials and color, and cost (high or low) maybe not really be that much of an issue. Luckily I’m not having to make a decision any time soon. Good post, Maria – it’s always so much fun to read everyone’s stories.

  • Mike says:

    Most expensive has been $7,500 for a Hancock & Moore dark brown leather sectional. Probably the best purchase I’ve made. The quality is outstanding. They’ll even provide replacement cushion inserts to original, registered owners at no cost.

    I don’t buy cheap. I have a hand me down Ethan Allen sofa and love seat that are getting worn. The frame is still good though with no squeaks.

  • Kay says:

    Cheapest (not counting free) was $300 practically new from friends. It’s hunter green velvet, pretty, and sits in our large dining room. Everyone who sees it likes it a lot. Most expensive is an American Leather sofa sleeper in our basement entertainment room, for $3200. We have no other guest room. Our overnight guests sleep very soundly on what feels like a regular bed, dressed with linen sheets. I look with longing at beautiful guest bedrooms, but our house is quite small. At least our guests have comfort in their surroundings of a massive CD collection, LPs, and books.

  • Pursuit99 says:

    I have new leather motion (recliner) loveseats and sofa from Elran which is a Canadian manufacturer. They are beautiful and comfortable and have the headrest which lays down when the unit is upright. But…for some reason, in the design, they glide along a path to full recliner but have no “lock” into positions except when upright. Thus, you have to maintain an ever-so-slight tension and stillness in your body to hold the spot you want. For that reason, I would not choose this product again. No going back now – it’s $8000 too late. Darn!

  • Sharon says:

    The least expensive sofa we ever bought was when we were married – exactly 49 years ago. We were young and had minimal incomes, but were determined to buy our own furniture and not have parent’ left overs! So off we marched to the big Hudson Bay Department Store for their annual (yes it only came once a year then) BAY DAY SALE! Lucky us it came just when we needed it. Our Sofa and matching chair was $196.00. Surprisingly it last to look decent for 10 years (and 3 children later!). Matter of fact all our furniture was bought at that sale – basics mind you, as there was no money for coffee/end tables, art work etc. We made do with home made gifts in that department!!

    Recently I saw a sofa in THE BAY that had exactly the same profile as that first sofa but covered in leather. It was an unusual profile for it’s time which I liked very much – out of the box style! So what was “hip” 49 years ago is back – I see it also in high end stores.

  • Adeline says:

    During our move from one province to another the movers had packed boxes of books on top of the sofa which collapsed the springs so it needed to be replaced NOW. I got a sofa (really cheap – on sale) that was neutral enough to go with anything. I hated it ! It was so blah that I couldn’t stand it but put up with it for years because it was in good condition. 🙁
    Now I have a new couch, with much better springs, that is currently covered in black leather but I have ordered some expensive, oh-so-beautiful, floral print that I just love and it will be the “boss” of my house. 🙂

  • Sat Hari says:

    The more accurate question is how long will I have to wait before I can convince my husband it is time for us to get the sofa I want. Perhaps couples counseling could be incorporated into your design blogs. That’s not asking too much is it? 🙂

    The first and least expensive sofa we bought (and still have 14 years later) was $700. I think the most expensive and fairly recent sofa purchase was $1,800 but that was after some discounts for delinquent sales techniques and major delays in production / delivery.

    Love the newest sofa, but the wait was REALLY hard. I nearly forgot why I bought it in the first place!

  • Lisa says:

    My husband and I just bought our first home. 10 days later I loose my job, I have my eye on a $3500 sectional, but. will have to wait until I become employed again to save enough.

  • calmdervish says:

    I’ve been waiting for a sofa for a long time – I wanted cheap and good! Six months ago I found one, at the Sears warehouse store. It is off-white, 78 inches long, which was important, and regularly $1600. But I bought it for under $500. because it had some dirt along the top cushions, from a delivery van, plus the store had a big sale. The marks were easy to remove. It is so very comfortable, and has nice lines.

  • Ellen says:

    Great post Maria. I recently worked with a client who was “the client who cannot decide” so this post resonated with me. She saw this collection in a showroom and decided to wait and invest. Loved the Good-Cheap and Fast, so true. Where do you find this stuff.?
    Ellen

  • mrsben says:

    Here is my two cents worth. Fast forward 45 years and I still have the same Living Room sofa which has been professionally reupholstered several times BUT is slated very shortly to be donated as I am downsizing. It was quality at the time when I purchased it and was an antique. I paid an arm and a leg for it, however the cost of having it reupholstered over the years has far exceeded its original price tag …. keep this factor in mind. As for media/family/great room sofaS I have gone through several. The worse being a Lazy Boy product and was somewhat pricey at the time. (Cannot recall its cost but it was so uncomfortable for light-weights that I gave it away to a neighbour of mine.) The best; actually an Ikea leather sofa ‘n loveseat at a much cheaper price tag which they no longer carry but is well constructed, timeless in design and verrrrry comfortable! Summary; I wouldn’t recommend an outrageously priced sofa if not being used constantly or if you like change. Also IMHO; the wisest thing you can do when choosing a sofa is purchase one that suits your life style/needs. That way you will ensure ‘a bang for your buck’ no matter what the price tag reads. -Brenda-

  • SylviA says:

    Cheapest sofa was in college. I bought a used love seat and matching chair for under $100 from another student. I had to fix the wonky frame of the upholstered chair myself and since I am no carpenter, I was always afraid to let anyone else sit on the piece except me. After roughly 2 years, the seat on the love seat fell through the bottom of its frame depositing my two guests on the floor with their feet in the air. Good times.

    The most expensive sofa/love seat took some serious planned savings. The sofa set had everything I wanted, though…comfort, recliners, stuffing I could add or subtract for just the right amount of comfy, adjustable lumbar cushions and all in the perfect beige leather for durability and a timeless quality. Literally, every cushion was removable and interchangeable to even out wear spots. The amount of $7000 in 1996 felt somewhat obscene and self indulgent, but I’ve not regretted it since we spend most of our time on that furniture. It’s been 18 years, and those pieces are still serving us well. We take good care of our things, but they’ve survived intact through 3 moves, 3 cats and two dogs. Our current Aussie Retriever mix literally sighs almost every time he curls up on the sofa. Yes, within boundaries, our pets were allowed on the furniture from the very beginning. The few scratches over the years from the pets are barely visible due to the color and type of leather processing selected, along with interim touch ups. I don’t believe darker or less expensive leather would have lasted nearly so long or so well.

    We scrimped elsewhere in our budget, but not when it came to our sofa set and our bed. For us, comfort, durability, and amount of use have always been key criteria. We got the best we could afford, and paid cash. We appreciated the investment all the more. Even now, all these years later, you will still hear us say every once in a while, “omg, I love this couch”.

  • maddie says:

    Cheapest was a hand me down from my mother that was handed down to her from my grandmother (her mother in law). A camel back sofa circa 1935 made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Came with a matching Chair and a Wingback style know as a Liberty Chair. After almost twenty years I recovered the sofa in natural linen and the chairs in different blue upholstery fabric. I still love them. The most expensive was a $2000 beauty from Ethan Allen brown velvet with shelter arms 16 years ago, still comfortable and still looks good! The mistake I made over the years was waiting until I could afford “good bedroom” furniture, working with make shift dressers and beds without headboards because I was too much of a perfectionist to buy something I could afford. Thankfully after 15 or so years of that we went and bought “good enough” furniture that looks decent and was inexpensive. Still have the bedrooms that way, focusing on good mattresses, linens and curtains, etc.. For me it has been more important to focus spending money on the furniture in the public areas of my home.

  • KJ says:

    Well, I’ll definitely put them on the list for my sofa shopping. I like their Allie and Bianca. My kids really want a recliner couch but I wasn’t impressed with the ones I saw. I could live with Allie or Bianca though.

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