Furniture shopping is exhausting!

Testing chairs and sofas is a lot of work! We spent the afternoon looking for furniture at several stores in the city. Each one carried different sofa brands in different silhouettes and we tested all of them. Well, except in the last store; we only sat on about half of the product lines they had because we were tired by then.

We learned that while we love the feel of overstuffed furniture, we don't love the look for the great room upstairs. We don't want something too modern with squared-off lines and hard foam, either. So we want something with some rounded lines that isn't too ginormous and overstuffed and that's comfortable.

At one place, tried out some Natuzzi furniture and fell in love with many pieces. Many of their sofas are very comfortable for both of us - my feet reached the ground!!! - but the looks they had tended to be a bit too modern for us. Plus the samples were all white leather, which makes them look a little stand-offish to us. We actually found a swivel chair that we both love but that costs more than a sectional at other stores. Sadly, it has a curvy look that doesn't really go with anything but overstuffed furniture. Sigh.

I think that European furniture may be a bit smaller than North American-made furniture, partly because North Americans are bigger - or they like bigger furniture. So we may have better luck finding pieces that work for both of us if we can find more European manufacturers. The trouble with buying furniture made elsewhere in the world is that it's going to cost lots of extra money and it'll take longer to make the furniture. Then again, we're not going to be buying furniture for a while after we furnish the house so it would be better to make sure that we get the right furniture.

Even though we weren't looking for entertainment room (family room? the basement, in any case, where the video games will be) furniture, we did test out some theatre seats. There was an amazingly comfortable Palliser theatre chair with a power recliner. Oh, how decadent it was! With the power recliner you can set the exact amount of recline you want.

We also discovered reclining wing chairs today. This might be Ian's favourite style of chair :) I love the look of a wing chair and they're quite comfortable if they're the right size, and to put a recliner on it? Heavenly. I wouldn't mind getting a wing chair made for me, if it's possible and a reasonable cost.

Lest you think we can't make any decisions, we think we've settled on appliances. We stopped in at one of the appliance places today and talked to a very knowledgeable sales guy (who wasn't really pushy, but he was definitely a sales guy) who helped us clarify what we wanted. We need to confirm the measurements in the house before making a final decision on these appliances but at least we know what we want. At least we'll be able to eat and wash clothes in the house, even if there's no place to sit.

The furniture-shopping fun continues tomorrow. Stay tuned...