When DH and I first got together, I had _white_ sofas. Perfectly fine for a single woman and her Cairn Terrier, but not even a little bit appropriate for people who often eat while lounging in front of the TV. After my charming toddler goddaughter got pizza all over the sofas, I decided that the white sofas had to go. Forever.
By then DH and I were engaged, and I figured that he deserved some input into what was going to be "our" living room furniture. Bad move. I discovered that DH has some real wierd preferences in upholstered furniture. His first choice was a dead ringer for his mother's parlor furniture (ugh). Then I discovered that he wanted (1) recliners built into the sofa, (2) no leather, suede or anything that had "that smell" (3) chairs and sofas so wide that I got lost in them. Eep.
Somehow we got sofas that fit all his criteria that weren't totally horrible, especially once I custom ordered the fabric. And after we painted the room, and I went to Germany to get proper curtains, the living room actually looked nice.
Oddly, when we bought the furniture, DH absolutely insisted that we buy the "extended lifetime warranty" on them. I believe that they are a total rip off and said so. However, he pointed out that we were spending $2,000 on two sofas, so the extra hundred bucks was really pin money. The warranty only covered the frame and mechanisms, and in my experience, it was the fabric on sofas that croaked first.
Anyway, fast forward to now. The fabric on the sofas has completely held up, even though children are draped across it 24/7. It looks brand new, and doesn't even need cleaning. (I steam clean it once in a while) But the frames and mechanism have "issues." Being the cheap so-and-so that I am, I decided to wait until the sofas totally destructed before I went to the bother of buying new sofas. After all, lifetime warranty or no, we got more than 16 years out of these things, and I figured the $100 warranty was long over.
Then my mother came over for lunch this past week. Of course the big sofa decided that it was the perfect moment to die. Mom ended up with her behind on the floor. I covered up as best as I could, and told Bob that we were going to have to cough some money for sofas, and probably soon.
That night, Mom called, almost in tears. God bless her, she thought we had the old sofas because we are too poor to afford new ones. She wanted to take some money out of her retirement account to buy me new ones. Egads. I naturally refused, and told her that it was merely intertia that kept me from buying sofas. She made me promise I would have it fixed or replaced, and that if I need money, I would tell her. (a total lie, BTW. I'm not going to rob my mother's retirement account for any reason)
So DH and I went sofa shopping the next morning. We started out at the same store where we bought the sofas long ago. It's changed quite a bit over the years - the current styles include loose cotton slipcovers on everything, which I don't like, because if it looks messy in the store, it's gonna look like drek in my house. Bob still has his strange mental block against leather, and recliner sofas are now practically extinct in the upper quality lines. (Cheap furniture is a huge waste of money. It just doesn't last, and ends up much more expensive in the long run)
We eventually found a set, a sofa and two stand-alone recliners in a lovely microfiber that looks exactly like suede (in eggplant with matching taupe pillows. I might reverse that, so the furniture is taupe and the accessories are eggplant). Price wasn't too bad, either; and it had the same "lifetime warranty." At this point, Bob mentioned the old sofas to the sales rep. The rep commented that it was "too bad we didn't keep the original sales paperwork, or the store would have fixed the old sofas or given us the new ones for nothing."
To my astonishment, Bob pulled the original sales slip out of his wallet. Apparently, when we bought the sofas, the sales rep told him that keeping the receipt was the key to the warranty. He had put the original reciept with our important papers, and grabbed them on a whim on the way out the door.
Big sales rep/customer rep/store manager conference. Kath lies on various chaise lounges while we wait, and Bob fetches me a Diet Coke. They look at the papers and talk for a bit longer. I start to snooze, and Bob goes over to try and speed up the process. Finally, the group comes over to tell me the decision:
They're sending over a technician to see if the frame of the sofa is worth saving (I was under it, and it's totally toast), and if not, guess what we get for free? Apparently, the warranty had some fine print saying that if the fabric was in good condition, they had to repair or replace the thing. The old sofas are no longer available, so they have to give us sofas of equal value. Amazingly, the sofa/chairs we picked out were within a hundred bucks of the old ones, so that would be considered an adequate replacement.
So, we see the sofa tech next week, but they've already put in my order for the new ones (at no cost to me, except for the extra fabric I ordered to make additional pillows and valances). I should have new sofas that support adult human beings in seven weeks. For free. Whoopee!
Free sofas... mmm. My butt's excited already.
Kathy N-V