Furniture shopping

Furniture shopping. A fun thing to do because there are so many choices, but also a scary thing to do because you are wondering if you made the right choice. Not to mention the cost of the items! Our current living room furniture is too big for the somewhat narrow living room in our new place, so that furniture will most likely go downstairs into the finished basement (*crossing fingers it fits down the stairs*)- which leaves us with an empty room.

We were trying to balance a few competing thoughts as we looked for a new couch, two chairs, coffee table and end tables this past weekend. Do we purchase something that is a bit cheaper as it will get destroyed/stained/etc when we have kids? (realizing that we would have to buy new stuff sooner rather than later if we go this route). Or do we go with something a bit nicer that could potentially stand up better to kid wear and tear, but would still have some battle scars?

So we headed out to Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn, Bob’s Discount Furniture, Raymond and Flanagan, Bassett Furniture and La-Z-Boy. Being the ever engineer, CP plotted out the room size with a corresponding CAD drawing and figured that we needed a couch with less than 40 inches of depth. Also, not wanting to crowd the room with big pieces of furniture, we decided on a couch with two chairs as opposed to two couches.

We found some comfortable couches at Crate and Barrel but our favorite couch was simply too big for the room. Pottery Barn only had two couches in the entire store and we are not going to buy a couch without sitting on it first! We found a comfortable chair at Bob’s, but the sofa quality seemed to be lacking. We then got very annoyed at Raymond and Flanagan as a saleswoman accosted us from the moment we stepped in the door. She wouldn’t allow us to look around, trying out couches ourselves. She ferried us around the showroom, telling us that we really could fit a bigger couch into the room. Ummm no lady. Listen to your customer!! La-Z-Boy didn’t have anything exciting and was actually more expensive than I had hoped.

From the moment we stepped into Bassett Furniture, the experience was great. A no pressure salesperson/free designer and a way to customize the couch to whatever fabric or leather we wanted, along with picking out the style of the couch, the cushions on the couch, the arm style and even the pleating. Wow! Plus, the store was having a 30% off sale. We found a great wool rug to match, along with a coffee table and two end tables. I was scared to hear the final cost, but with the 30% off it is just as expensive (if not less) than if we bought everything at Crate and Barrel. Plus they offer 12 month interest-free financing. Much better than trying to rush paying off a credit card with an interest rate!

After we got home, we started to look up reviews on Bassett. No bad reviews of the specific CT store, but some bad reviews elsewhere in the country. However, we found plenty of complaints on the other stores (to be fair, Crate and Barrel and the like probably have a bigger market share than Bassett). No one has a 100% perfect record.

Have any of you used Bassett Furniture? Or do you know of anyone that has? We are thinking about going with them……