Finding A Place For Our Thrifted Retro Sofa

We went to a Salvation Army store hoping to find a pusher for our then 9-month old baby girl and left the store with a new/old retro sofa!

Who would have predicted that would happen? Not us. We were not in the market for a new sofa at all, although we were talking about replacing our too-big-for-the-room queen bed in the guest room with a sofa bed. This would give us more walking space in the room and we could even use the rarely-used guest room as a playroom when we don’t have guests. We also have been on the lookout for a small sofa for our office, but we had no real plans to buy anything just yet.

We just fell in love with this retro sofa and the deal was even sweeter when we found that it had a bed in it as well. The mattress is in really good shape. It looks like it’s been barely used.

This photo doesn’t really show the colors of the sofa, but you’ll see a better photo soon that really shows what it looks like in real life. The colors include yellow, orange, coral, navy blue, white/cream, and brown.

What’s more, the sofa was already professionally cleaned and sanitized! Check out your Salvation Army store if you’re iffy about buying upholstered pieces from thrift stores (bed bugs, anyone?). We found a good number of upholstered furniture that were cleaned and sanitized.

At first, I thought that the sofa would be perfect for our office, since we need a sofa for that room, too. But then we remembered the situation with our guest bedroom, so we weren’t sure. To help us decide, I took a cushion and tested out how it would look in both the guest bedroom and the office.

The guest bedroom is painted in Kerry Blue (Martha Stewart) and it really helped the colors in the sofa cushion POP.  By the way, this is the best photo that truly shows you the colors of the sofa.

The office is painted in Intense Teal (Sherwin Williams) and it is SO HARD to accurately capture the teal color in photos. It always comes out looking like royal blue or bright blue. This random photo was unexpectedly my best effort in all of my years of trying to take a half-way decent photo of the color:

Just ignore the blurry and cute baby in the photo, focus on the wall color (especially on the left of Janella’s head) and how it looks with the sofa cushion.

No way, right? It just didn’t go. That cemented my decision: the sofa was destined to be in the guest bedroom slash playroom slash exercise room. Hopefully, that will help make that room much more functional and useful for our daily lives.

A huge drawback to the sofa is HOW FREAKING HEAVY IT IS. I mean, it’s so heavy that I’d rather attempt to lift an elephant than to carry this sofa again. Somehow, I was able to help Nick drag the sofa off the truck and into the garage without killing myself, but I just couldn’t muster the energy needed to carry it into the house. We asked a friend, Sean, to help Nick carry it into the house…

…and this happened.

I don’t blame Nick or Sean for this sad, sad, sad incident. I blame the brick wall corner on the exterior of our home. I blame the sofa for being so heavy. I blame our wallets for being too thin to hire professional movers.

It’s a good thing that the sofa has such a busy pattern. I’m sure I can stitch it up with a dark thread without it showing too much. Hopefully! I’ll share whenever I get around to doing that.

And when I think about it even more, the sofa is just a really perfect fit for the room. The coral in it will go great with the coral nightstands that are in my plans and the yellow goes well with the yellow lamps that are already in there. Perfect.

(from my guest bedroom plans)

I’m so happy with the sofa and with its price tag. It was only $200 – a great price for a practically brand-new sofa with a bed in it. It is so comfy to sit in, too.

The next step is to lug it from our living room, where it’s chilling, into the guest bedroom, which is only around 10 steps away. I’m really not looking forward to that 10 steps.

Actually, before I do that, I’ll have to sell the bed on Craig’s List. I hope to get a good price for it. I’ll need to convince Nick to spend the spoils on house decor, instead of less important things like food and clothing. I mean, right?