The second we heard our offer was accepted, our minds turned to our new project - buying furniture! Ok, maybe not the second after - at that point our minds turned to a bottle of wine (or at least our lips did!), but pretty soon after!
It couldn't have been more than a day or two after and we were on the hunt for some new furniture for the house. Anyone who knows Mike and I knows we like lists, and sure enough we had made a list of what furniture we needed to buy (among other things!) so off we went, list in hand.
Now, our house is not huge, not even big, it's a Beaches/Toronto home, so it's on the smaller size, I like to say cozy. We knew we wanted a king size bed, and were willing to sacrifice floor space for it, and a new light coloured couch, since I had had enough of black leather!
After a lot of searching we ended up buying our king bed from GH Johnson's, which is a warehouse-like furniture store that I really recommend - good prices and nice selection, and a couch from the Chesterfield Shop, which I also highly recommend - good prices and great selection - you can choose everything from the material to the armrests!
Fast forward a month and we went to our final walk through before the close, and we thought we should measure the rooms.
Bedroom - check to the king bed!
Living room - the couch will not fit!
The couch we had bought would leave about 10 cm walking space. Luckily we were able to call the Chesterfield Shop and since they had not started making our couch yet we were able to order us a smaller size that would give us room to walk past it!
So, my piece of advice to new homeowners may seem obvious, but in the excitement of the moment is easy to forget. Unless you are into construction, you can't change the size of your house, so make sure you know how much space you have to work with when you are buying new furniture. Take a tape measure with you when you go tour houses, or better yet once you have purchased a house, stop, breathe a minute, grab a bottle of wine, and stop again. Wait until you do your final walk through or move into the house and you have as much time as you want to measure your rooms before you go shopping, list in hand.
