New Sofa!!

I'm so excited!  My hubby finally caved and  agreed to let me purchase a new, smaller sofa for our front living room.  The tradeoff was that for the amount I spent on a new sofa, I had to be able to make up via craigslist or other means (by selling what we didn't need/use anymore for the same price as the new sofa).

Here's a picture of our old sofa in the front living room:

While it looks "ok" in the room, I have always felt that the scale was way off.  The room isn't very big (11x16 ft, with really only about 11x10ft of "usable" space, due to both the front door and the stairs leading up to our second level).  The sofa itself was almost 8 ft. wide and about 4 ft deep, so it took up almost all of the usable space on one of the 4 walls, and really cut in to the room with its 4ft depth.

I realized immediately that, even more important than finding a shorter sofa was finding a sofa that wasn't as deep. I took measurements (as you can see in the pic above) from the wall to the start of the fireplace surround, and got a measurement of 36".  I concluded that I couldn't have a sofa that was more than 35" deep, so that no part of the sofa came out further than the start of the fireplace.

As for length, I kind of estimated that a sofa under 80" would look best in the space, as it would allow for an end table on either side of the sofa.

So, here was option #1 that I considered - I loved the shape and size, but wasn't sure about the "peat" color.  The price was good too (and is even better now, since as I write this, it's been decreased to under $400!).

Here was option #2 - I liked the color of this sofa better, but wasn't as much a fan of the shape.  I also wasn't sure how "velvet microfiber" would hold up to a rambunctious toddler and a cat. The price was also good on this one, and has since also been reduced to around $400.

I eventually settled on this sofa from World Market:

It's the Morgan Sofa in Sand Brown, and, while regularly priced at $599, it was 25% off during the month of November, so I was able to save $150!  So, on a random Monday night, 3 days before Thanksgiving, I loaded Heidi up in the pickup truck, and we made the trek out to the Rockville store (the 4 closer stores I called were all sold out of this particular sofa).  It then needed to be assembled, which I did early one morning before Heidi got up.  Here's how it looks in the room:

I think it's a vast improvement over the old sofa, and I'm really happy with how it looks in the room.  I posted pics of the rest of the room onto HGTV's Rate My Space in order to get suggestions for window coverings and other accessories.  Here's where you can find it - http://www.roomzaar.com/rate-my-space/Living-Rooms/Living-Room---need-ideas/detail.esi?oid=22782855

Stay tuned for the "final product"!