Tag Archives: tv stand

The Loveseat Saga Ends, Finally

By Claire Posted in downsizing, Personal, Small-House Living Tagged , , , ,

You may remember that just before the pandemic started, we made the decision to replace our large old furniture with smaller pieces, because our old furniture was too big for our little living room. It just didn’t look right.

We started with the tv stand. We had been using our old sofa table as a tv stand, and it looked large and messy, with lots of cords hanging down the back. So we replaced it with small tv stand from Wayfair.com that holds all of our DVDs (though you can’t see them), and we’re very happy with it.

Then the pandemic hit, and for a while furniture stores closed, and then they were only open for limited hours, and furniture was limited because the factories were closed. So we gave up for a while, though I was looking at loveseats and small sofas online the entire time.

A month ago we replaced our living room carpet. Out with the old brown wool, in with a bright cream nylon. What a difference it made! But we needed a temporary parking spot for the giant loveseat to get it out of the living room before the carpet guys arrived. We soon discovered it wouldn’t even fit in our little kitchen! So my husband and son squeezed it through the front door and put it in the garage. Once the carpet was installed, we decided not to squeeze the loveseat back in through the front door, but to sell it instead. So off we went, furniture shopping for its replacement.                                                                                   

Two days and four stores later, we were depressed. We didn’t find a single thing we liked. Everything was big and bloated and made out of cheap fabric, even if the price tag was high. One store was a sea of light gray; boring! So many pieces were uncomfortable. Online reviews often said the same thing so buying a loveseat online was out.

My husband then came up with a great idea; why not get a bench instead of a loveseat? It would be smaller, but would provide extra seating when visitors are here. We both began looking online and it wasn’t long before we agreed that we’d found the perfect bench.

It arrived in less than a week and now it sits in our living room and we love it. Next step: new, smaller recliners and a small chair for the spot by the window.

Small Scale TV Stand: Found!

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Small-House Living Tagged , , , , ,

We’ve made a little progress on the living room, I’m happy to say.

Since our small house has a small living room, our goal is to replace our current furniture, which came from our much-larger house, with furniture that is more appropriately scaled to a 12’ X 16’ room.

Until now, the television sat on a sofa table that took up almost the entire length of the wall. After much searching online, I found two tv stands that qualified for my desire for something that was somewhat taller and not as wide in hopes that proper scale with space around it would help give the room a more open feel.

I also wanted a tv stand that would hold our many DVDs without revealing them. (In a small room, the last thing you need is lots of miscellaneous stuff stored where you can see it.)

Ironically, we ended up having to choose between two polar opposites: a lovely oak Stickley media center and a nice-looking tv stand from Wayfair, which was not made of oak. But it was also narrower than the sofa table; meanwhile, the Stickley stand was almost the same width as the sofa table had been, but I chose to overlook that because the piece was so pretty.

We drove nearly an hour to see the Stickley piece, where we learned of its $2400 price tag. I would have been willing to pay that amount, except that as it turned out, the piece didn’t have a dedicated spot for a DVD player. Putting it on top of the stand would add to the look of clutter that I didn’t want. Putting it inside the stand meant we’d have to open the doors to play DVDs, but those doors would open into a traffic pattern.

Then the Wayfair stand went on sale for the ridiculously low price of $218, and we decided we had to give it a try. It arrived in a few days, having survived the shipping process with no dings or scratches, and it went together beautifully. We collected DVDs from the three areas in the house where we’d been storing them, and they all fit inside….and you can’t see them. Just what I wanted.

All the stand needs now is something to fill that empty spot under the DVD player. We had a boom box on the lower shelf of the sofa table, and we miss it. So we’re waiting on this system with Bluetooth, CD player and FM radio to arrive, and it will go in that spot. Can’t wait!

The Furniture Hunt Continues

By Claire Posted in downsizing, Personal, Small-House Living Tagged , , , , ,

I’m back on the hunt for new, smaller-scale furniture for our living room. So far, it hasn’t been easy.

One problem is that there are still so many huge overstuffed pieces of furniture for sale out there. That’s not for anyone with a small house.

Of the sofas that aren’t huge and overstuffed, many are quite long. Again, that won’t work in our 12’ X 16’ living room. Although I’ve noticed while looking inside local homes for sale on Realtor.com (a habit I can’t seem to break) that many people with homes like ours buy a large overstuffed sectional, fill the room with it, hang a huge television on the facing wall and put a floor lamp near the sectional and call it a day. That’s not for us.

I’ve discovered that websites like Wayfair.com and Overstock.com offer filters so that you can weed out the wrong sizes and styles while wading through literally thousands of sofas and sectionals. That’s very convenient; the problem is that we haven’t seen a sofa we really like, and I suspect that, while affordable, the quality isn’t there and most won’t last very long.

But we’re getting closer. We just visited a higher-end furniture store with sturdier furniture. It’s not inexpensive, but we’re willing to pay for quality. Unfortunately, the colors and fabric available now aren’t very appealing to us. But we’ll keep looking.

We’re also looking for modest-sized chairs and a small stand for our television that will hide our DVDs and our DVD player. This appears to be another challenge: there are so many huge televisions out there that most stands are nearly as wide as the wall we want to put one on.

Redoing the living room is going to take longer than I thought.