My New Living Room Sofa Has Arrived!

Do y’all even remember that I ordered a new sofa for the living room? It’s been a while! 😀 I ordered it on January 20, so it’s been about 4.5 months. That’s actually not too bad for a custom sofa. I ordered the James 2-seat sofa upholstered in Galaxy high performance velvet from Interior Define. (I’m just a normal customer. They didn’t give it to me.) I upgraded to the 88-inch length with a bench seat and down alternative reversible seat cushion.

The color is slightly cooler than I had expected. It’s so hard to choose something large from a small swatch. But I absolutely love it! Here are the two sofas next to each other. You can see the color difference. Our old sofa is darker and warmer in color. The new one is a little bit lighter and cooler. The new one is only three inches wider than the old one, and they’re about the same depth.

But the thing I love the most about the new one is that it has clean lines. Y’all know how much I love things to look neat and tailored. I don’t like things to look slouchy and unstructured. So these back cushions on the old sofa have bothered me for quite some time now.

These structured back cushions are much more my style. Just look at how they stand up straight and look so nice. No slouch here!

I love the look of the back of the sofa, which is good since it’s the first part of the sofa to be seen when someone walks through our front door.

The upholstery job on this sofa is perfect. The old sofa (which was a fraction of the price) had a section that wasn’t pulled taut as it was being stapled into place, and it had wrinkles. I was continually having to smooth out the wrinkles. This one has no areas like that. Everything is pulled taut, just as an upholstery job on a custom sofa should be.

Looking the other direction, you can see a HUGE difference in the colors. The old sofa is quite dark and almost has a muddy look to it. The new one definitely has blue undertones, and has a much brighter look to it.

It took me a few minutes to get used to the difference, but I actually love the brightness that the blue undertones give the room. And I love this cooler gray with the pink curtains and the purple chairs. What I’m not crazy about is the cool gray sofa with the grasscloth drawers on the console table.

I love the sofa with everything else, but those grasscloth drawer fronts are going to have to undergo a makeover. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to remedy the situation right now, but I’ll figure something out. What I do know for sure is that those two colors can’t live together in my living room. 😀

I’m also going to have to start from scratch with finding throw pillows. Nothing that I had on the previous sofa looks good on this one. I do like the look of the throw pillow in the picture below, but I think it’s way too small. Even though this sofa has almost the same dimensions as the previous one, this one seems to require larger throw pillows. Look how tiny this pillow looks on the new sofa.

The sofa came with four matching pillows. They’re so perfectly square and rigid, so I thought they could be used as back pillows, but I don’t love this look. I like to be able to see the larger back pillows.

But obviously, I’m not going to use them as throw pillows, either. They’re just so rigid, and they remind me of Chiclet gum minus the fun colors. While I love my sofa to have straight, clean lines, I don’t like my throw pillows to be so rigid and stand at attention like that. I like my throw pillows to be fat, filled with down and feathers, and karate chopped to break up the straight lines.

So it looks like I won’t have any need for the perfect square Chiclet pillows, and I need to find some larger colorful pillows for the new sofa. I swiped this one from one of the purple chairs just to get an idea of the size that I need. This is a pretty big pillow, but even it looks too small for this sofa. I do like the idea of something colorful and bright with a white background, though.

I’m so excited to finally have this sofa, and even more excited that I can get rid of the other one that Felicity (our cat) has torn up. She has already tried to scratch on this one, but it’s just so difficult for her to get her claws into it (one reason I LOVE velvet furniture), so I’m hoping she’ll lose interest very quickly. I do plan to get her something new to scratch on, and I’ll put it on the entryway side of the side table next to the sofa. I think if I provide her a place to scratch right there — something that her trimmed and blunt-filed claws can still actually catch on — she won’t have much interest in the sofa. So hopefully I can find something that can sit in that spot, and not look like an obvious cat scratching post.

 

 

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34 Comments

  1. Hope this means the one I ordered in February is on its way soon as well! I like the cooler color in your room. It picks up the blues in the rug so well AND the darker blue in the walls. I get it about the slouchy cushions. My existing one has those and the new one doesn’t. Will never succumb to those again. Looks lovely!!

    1. I love your new sofa. I’m on a sofa journey myself. I’m searching for the perfect jewel toned velvet sofa for my new home. I

  2. This one is perfect. Perfect lines and color. I don’t see the same issue with the grasscloth. Maybe live with it a while and let your eyes adjust. I think it goes really well with everything.

  3. I went with the same kind of fabric after you mentioned how hard it is for cats to claw at. We do keep a cat scratcher next to our new loveseat just in case because our cats love to scratch it. So far that has kept our new chair and sofa safe. Love your new sofa.

  4. When you bought the cover for the first throw pillow, I went to the same ETSY site and bought the last one! I love it in my Arizona house. If you are ditching it I’d love to buy the cover from you, postage and all! I’m grappling with the sofa in my breakfast room. But it belongs to my Fella so at best it would have to be slipcovered but finding one around here is like water in the desert!

  5. I love the new sofa! Oh, and that rug is now so divine, you have outdone yourself in my eyes. As for the drawers would you be able to cover them in a fabric that would go with the room?
    I had a sofa like your old one I despised it on a daily basis, finally my sister needed a new one and liked it so guess who got a new sleek sofa? lol
    Love how everything is coming together just the way you want it to.

  6. I really like the new sofa a lot. Too bad you couldn’t cover the new throw pillows, but then they would still be stiff. I am so happy for you and Matt to have been finally able to get out of the house and have some fun together. The van was so worth it.

  7. Cottonstem, Erin Kern, did an Instagram post about how they “trained” their cats to leave new furniture alone.

  8. Very pretty! I like the new structured look too. My sister in law put double sided tape on the corners of her sofa and the cat won’t touch it.

    1. Careful about using double-sided tape on velvet! My husband put double-sided tape on the arm of the couch to keep the arm protectors from sliding off. At some point, when I removed the tape, the nap of the velvet came off, too, leaving the flat base fabric showing in strips.

  9. Just a thought…use your craft paints to paint the grasscloth in a color you pull from either the rug or your painting.

      1. Same suggestion from me too. Although I personally don’t see an issue with the current grasscloth color.

  10. The lines of the sofa are so pretty it seems a shame to cover them up with throw pillows. I understand the need for a pop of color, though. What about a round bolster on each end?

  11. I think the baskets look great with your blinds. Maybe it’s the table/basket combo that isn’t right. Love the new couch! Perhaps 3 of those chiclets could be used for a bench somewhere.

  12. When we moved into our new home we had a bathroom where the walls were covered in grass cloth that was putrid green. I thought what the heck I’ll try to paint them a neutral beige color and believe it or not they came out perfect. So maybe try to paint those drawer fronts?

  13. Can you refill 2 of the now spare hard pillows? They are the perfect size to act as the backdrop pillow to any colourful feature pillows, just need to be squishier.

  14. Your new sofa looks much more aligned with your style! You’ll find the right accessories, I’m sure.

  15. Love the new sofa! I wish they would do something about using those slouchy back cushions. They always look awful after only a year or so. As for the drawer fronts, can you paint the grasscloth a pleasing color? May have to use dye rather than paint, but it would be the easiest and quickest fix!

  16. . I think it would look great to paint your baskets white. They would match the lamp on the table and I love the look of gray and white. I am also doing a living room redo in blue and white now. I am doing a larger project though. Changing sofa, chair and rug as well as all artwork. It was time after 20 years.

  17. Wow! What an adventure you’ve taken us on! LOVE the new sofa.

    What about garage or estate sales to purchase “new” throw pillows? Just curious. That’s where I’ve purchased the few that I have.

  18. My cats leave the couches be when they have a scratch post, and there’s lots that are supposed to be decorative. I googled “cactus scratch post” to find a pretty one, but instead I’m putting this one here, because it’s funny: https://www.amazon.com/VETRESKA-Cherry-Scratching-Natural-Scratcher/dp/B084KMMRSS/

    Of course scratch post prices are ridiculous, and you are a master DIYer. So let me also add that apart from wood (that you already work a lot with), you can also use plumbing pipes for the structure – they are the right width and have ready-made corners.

  19. Love your new couch!!!! I have a couple of ideas for you- why not pull the inserts out of the 4 pillows and fill them with down, so that they will be soft? Also, maybe swap the purple sideboard in your TV area, with the one in your entry? I think the echo of purple in that spot would look great!

  20. I myself am pillow crazy!! I would keep 2 of the original pillows, buy covers for the other 2 (Etsy has great prices) and get a more eklectic look!!

  21. I think the pillows that came with your couch might be needed for people who are shorter- like yourself (and me). The couch looks pretty deep in the pics so hang on to them until you figure that out. It’s very uncomfortable to sit on a couch you can’t lean your back on because you’re not tall enough.

    You can easily paint grasscloth so why not paint the drawers your usual teal or take it back 20%?