front door and decisions, decisions

Oh, hello.

I recently ordered this decal for my front door from an etsy shop called Lighthouse Decals. Something fun; a bit of whimsy. Something we all need these days. 

I've been spending a lot of time online looking for certain needed things for our home: patio cushions and pillows, a rug and chair for Brian's office, a welcome mat for the front porch, an odd-sized frame for a print, a bench or banquette for the kitchen table. It's not pleasant ~ at least not for me. There's too many choices and I end up falling down that internet rabbit hole. Other times, I've bookmarked things I've liked but I'm not completely sure on, or I want to show Brian first. And when I go back to them, they're out-of-stock.

One thing I will not order online is a sofa. Or couch. (Whatever you want to call it.) Too risky. I have to see it in person and sit on it and even lie down on it. When you're spending that much money and it's something non-returnable, no way. We'd looked in person for a sofa at several furniture stores in the past year. We never found anything we were 100% sure about, so we didn't buy. But now that I'm stuck in the house and I stare at our old sofa more than I used to, it's really bothering me.  Side note: excuse the small plate of berries and almonds; I was eating breakfast and thinking about a blog post and got up to take a photo. No staging, just real life.

This sofa is 14 years old. It is worn out. The cushions sink all the way down when you sit on them. There is no support. I can't sit on this sofa for more than 10 minutes without my back killing me. Not to mention, it's permanently discolored despite being professionally cleaned. 

And, my cats used to use the arms of the couch as a scratching post. I have a post by this arm of the sofa now and that's really helped. But the damage is done. We obviously can't go to stores now and sofa shop, so here's what I'm wavering on...

We have an IKEA sofa in the basement family room. It's about eight years old, but hardly used. As empty nesters, Brian and I never use this space in the basement. We have a ranch-style house so everything we need is on the first floor ~ kitchen, living room, bedrooms and bathrooms.

Going down the stairs into the basement, you can see how we have the sofa facing the TV. Which we never watch. Unless we're under a tornado warning and are camped out in the basement, or I'm on the treadmill. Both not frequent events. 😉

One reason we chose this IKEA sofa for the basement was because it came in pieces in a box. There was no way a regular sofa would fit around a corner and through a doorway going down into our basement. So we were able to assemble the sofa from the box right there in the basement.

Can you see where I'm going with this? I was thinking...

We could disassemble this sofa and bring upstairs to put in the living room to temporarily replace the ugly, old tan sofa. After all, even though this sofa is a cheap one, it certainly looks a lot better than what we have in the living room right now. 

But here's the cons: 

• I'd have to have Brian and our next door neighbor move the living room sofa to....where? Out by the curb and hope that someone picks it up with a day or two? What if they don't? We'd have to put the sofa in the garage and leave my car out on the driveway. For a long time.

• The disassembling and reassembling of the IKEA sofa is going to be a real pain-in-the-tush.

• That leaves us without a sofa in the basement and it's going to look weird down there without one. (I know, I know...we don't use this space. It's just an aesthetics thing to me.) And then once we are finally able to furniture shop again and do find a sofa for the living room, the IKEA sofa would once again have to be disassembled, carried back down to the family room, and reassembled.
  
  
  Whaddya think? Would you go for it? Or just leave things be until you could finally go sofa shopping in person again?