Finding An Affordable Sleeper Sofa: a house log

After lately revealing that John would be coming on as a full time blogger here on the home front (and mentioning that we had a full scale guest bedroom to office-slash-guest-bedroom-slash-playroom makeover in the cards) we are back to spill more details about that space’s big switcheroo. Spoiler alert: we need a sleeper sofa, STAT.

Let us take a look back – waaaaay back – at what the room looked like when we moved in.

It was in fact a fairly blank slate to begin with, so replacing the ceiling fan with a flush mount fixture (like this- basic and low-cost, but still an improvement) seemed to raise the ceiling about a foot. Then we simply painted the walls a neutral tone, brought in some crown molding, stained the floor a richer mocha color (which we also did to the rest of the existing hardwoods), switched out the valances for some clean-lined (and especially low-cost) roman shades from Ikea, and brought in a hand-me-down bed from a family member with some lively linens and a Hands-on headboard that we whipped up. Even the wall art was made on a budget.

We enjoyed our little guest bedroom and it served us well for years. In fact we were fairly sad when we realized that we’d have to make some major changes to the room when it came to accommodating an office for two along with a spot for a wee one to play without losing the can-sleep-two-people function that it consistently provided. Being use-what-we-have kind of people, our first thought was that perhaps we could reposition the bed against two walls to create a daybed type feeling and free up some floor space. So we rotated it into the corner and came up with the idea to upholster another headboard panel (which we drew in thanks to Photoshop below, see the arrow?) to demonstrate the idea:

And remember the rug we snagged on especially clearance from the Pottery Barn Outlet for $300 off a while back (with every intention of working it into the guest bedroom for some brought in softness)?

Well, we laid it out under the bed in an attempt to further ground that daybed/sleeping corner of the room. Burger seemed to like it (ten points if you find him), but we were not convinced.

The problem? The full sized bed still took up a large portion of the extremely small 10′ x 10.5′ room… leaving Clara zero floor space to play on while one or both of us worked (and speaking of working, we truly had no clue how we’d fit two desk spaces into this plan as it was). So we chose that we had to pull the plug on the full sized bed and come up with an alternate sleeping solution for our guests (preferably one that could be tucked away or minimized during the rest of our time in that room so it could more easily accommodate two bloggers and a baby most of the time.

Which meant that it was time to hit up Craigslist to see who would cough up $60 for our full sized bed frame and hand-me-down Sealy mattress & boxspring. The craziest thing was that by the time we had the bed disassembled we already had a buyer in route to our house! And within two hours of listing our bed we’d sold it (for our full $60 asking price). Fairly sweet, eh? Here is the mattress waiting for pick-up in the nursery.

And you can tell this part of the makeover in fact occurred a while back because there is no skirt on the crib and the nursery art wall has not been altered yet. We simply like to do one project at a time, so after taking a swift nursery hiatus to sell the mattress we were back on baby-room duty while the office waited its turn.

Oh and because we know that you folks like seeing our house all torn up, here is the master bedroom with our guest bedroom linens piled high on the bed while we waited for our new Craigslist friend to come cart the bed away. Burger seems to sneak into every bed photo that he can, does not he?

So anyway, once the ol’ full sized bed was sold and the rest of the things in the space were cleared out, we were in fact able to give the green bench and the bedside table that used to live in the guest bedroom a second life in the nursery (we enjoy repurposing everything that we can so that was a thrill and a half for us).

And we were left with a blissfully bare space to analyze every which way…

… to see how we could possibly squeeze a double office and a play area for Clara-Bean into the 10′ x 10.5′ room (along with maintaining the can-sleep-two function that we’d grown so accustomed to over the years).

First we seriously considered a murphy bed. You know, those fold-out-from-the-wall options that we have seen popping up all over the place lately. The downside was that many traditional murphy beds were not only extremely pricey, but the layout of the room would not accommodate the fold-up function since two walls had windows which would have been obscured when the bed was folded up (not a good idea in such a small space since we need all the light we can get). And the other two walls would not work thanks to the doorway into the room and a closet that we needed to maintain access to. Even if the layout could have accommodated a murphy bed, the one thing we did not like about it was the fact that when it was tucked up and away it did not provide a place to sit (which we knew would come in handy for everything from nursing to relaxing with Baby P while the other 50% of YHL blogs away at their desk). So we wondered if we could bring in a piece that would provide functional seating space all the time, simply with a much smaller footprint when it was not serving as a full sized bed. Yup, we are talking about a sleeper sofa.

But we had some serious reservations about how comfy a sleeper would truly be for our guests. Nearly everyone has had the ol’ rollbar-dented-back experience when crashing on an archaic sleeper sofa, and we certainly want our visitors to be 100% comfy (as opposed to stiff and sore in the am). But we have in fact slept on some simply-as-comfortable-as-a-normal-bed sleeper sofas on occasion, so we knew that if we did not skimp on the quality we could likely find something that would meet our needs when it came to providing some pleasant seating by day and sleeping by night when it was all folded out and fluffed up with linens and pillows. So our next step was to do some internet trolling to see what was out there online- simply to test the waters. Here is what we dug up:

1. This $689 Target option

2. This $899 Ikea option

3. This $1400 Crate & Barrel option

But the issue that we had with online options were that we could not truly lay on them to see how they felt with the mattress all folded out. And of course the $1400 Crate and Barrel option (which we could check out in stores for comfort-factor) was a bit more than we were hoping to spend. Heck the $899 Ikea version felt pricey to two low-cost-os like us. And blindly ordering the $689 option (which was only available online and not something we could experience for ourselves to ensure that it was soft and straightforward to sleep on) felt a bit too risky to especially cautious sofa-sissies like us. Besides, that honey wood was a bit too futon-ish for us, so the fact that we’d have to paint it or somehow make it over after paying full price and not being able to try it out felt like a bit much. And we chose we preferred upholstered arms for the higher end look and for the comfort factor when it is being used as a sofa (for nursing, reading stories to Clara, etc).

So after exhausting our online sleeper sofa search, we chose to hit up our go-to local furniture dealer where we could in fact fold out the sleeper sofas and take them for a spin instead of blindly ordering them and hoping for the best. Sofa Design is in fact where we got our beloved living room sofa (read how we saved $400 more than our Pottery Barn couch right here) and when we pulled into the parking lot to be greeted by a Floor Clearance Sample sign we could not assist but get all hyper and excited that we might simply find the deal we were hoping for…

JACKPOT! We scored a full sized sleeper sofa made by Rowe (one of our go-to sofa manufacturers, in fact they made our aforementioned living room sofa) for simply $699- thanks to the fact that it was a floor model. So it was simply ten dollars steeper than the futon-ish Target version but a lot more plush and posh looking (and feeling! there is even a comfort guarantee that you cannot feel the bar under the mattress unless you are over 350 lbs). Like nerds we totally pulled it out in the store and laid on it for a while as we thanked our lucky stars and then popped up to sign on the dotted line. And although we are typically neutral-sofa-people, we in fact truly like the subtle blue-green color of the cushions since they work fairly seamlessly with the rest of our whole-house color palette while injecting some lively (and stain hiding durability) into our future office/guest room/playroom.

We placed it right under the higher window which truly opened up the room and allowed so much more of our lovely Pottery Barn rug to be seen.

And you know what that means: waaaaay more floor space to accommodate a desk or two along with plenty of Baby P play area to spare.

But that is simply the beginning of our multifunctional office transformation. Stay tuned as we tackle more floor-plan maximization, paperwork and file storage, desks and chairs for two, art and accessories, toy storage, and even a new Hands-on light fixture makeover. Whew. And feel free to tell us all about any sleeper sofa or murphy bed victories that you folks have experienced. Have you built your own pull down bed? Or stumbled upon a especially comfortable sleeper sofa on sale? Spill the beans.