Two
months after receiving the above Virginia-model
set, our customer commented that it was just as
comfortable as a sofa that had cost them as much
as both the sofa and the loveseat from us
combined. He and his wife chose the puffy
back cushions, with the standard foam
seats and the 2"-higher back,
and they took advantage of the ability to adjust
the firmness of the puffy back cushions.
As
you see here, our puffy back cushions can look
neat (as opposed to the rumpled look shown above)
when not subjected to a very relaxed kind of
sitting/reclining; or they can be made neat again
after becoming rumpled, by means of some simple
straightening up. And our foam-filled seat
cushions almost always look neat.
Customers
should be aware that the exposed corners of all
cushions will be well filled out as of the time
the furniture is packed up or delivered by us,
but that some corners can become partly emptied
of filling as a result of incorrect handling.
This is especially true of the puffy filling,
which does not have the constant outward push
that characterizes the foam filling. Moderately
careful handling (mainly, not grasping the
cushions by the corners) will help prevent
corners from becoming baggy. But in any case, the
problem can be remedied by unzipping and reaching
inside a cushion (and inside the separate inner
casing of a puffy cushion), grasping some filling
from a place away from the corner, and pushing it
firmly out into the corner.
Please
note that it's good to turn your cushions
over and rotate their positions occasionally
to prevent distortion, especially if somebody
tends to sit in the same place on a sofa
regularly. Do this more frequently if a
grown-up's weight is on a cushion's edge much of
the time.
Cushions
with dense, durable, very supportive filling may
tend to feel overly firm at first, but will break
in with use, like a new shoe. (If a cushion
starts out feeling cushy, you probably wouldn't
get good support after it had softened with use.)
The softening can be greatly accelerated by
having the heaviest available person sit up and
down on the cushions vigorously for a few
minutes. Also, medium-firm support is often
firmer than what people are accustomed to; but,
once they get used to it, people usually like it
better (and their backs appreciate it also)
compared with the saggy support of typical sofas.
A California customer wrote, "We watched a
movie last night and my back did not get at all
sore. The back support seems quite good, unlike
our old sofa which was great for leaning back
your head but offered little back support. I note
in your handout that the cushions appear firm at
first and will soften up. They do seem firm when
you first sit on them but this is simply a first
impression and does not sustain itself during a
sitting."
What's below and behind the
cushions?
Our back cushions, 8" thick, have a
plywood panel behind, providing good support that
won't give excessively, like typical springs will
do eventually. Despite the solid support, you
won't have a feeling of hitting anything hard
behind, unless you're a heavy person leaning back
hard. If you're over 250 pounds, you may want to
order our firmer cushions to prevent feeling the
hard support behind. The standard support for the
seats is a thinly-padded wood base, again
providing good, non-sagging support. The 6
1/2" of very high-quality foam on top of it
feels soft for the first few inches but becomes
progressively firmer as it compacts and as you
sink down a little further, without allowing a
feeling of hitting bottom. It provides
comfortable support that stays comfortable for
decades of hard use, judging by the fact that
over half of our customers who come back to us to
renew their furniture after 20 years or more just
buy replacement covers for their cushions;
their inner cushions are still providing
comfortable support after all those years. Again,
for those over 250 pounds, you should consider
one of our firmer options. For softer support, we
also offer a webbing suspension (see just below
for more information on construction of that).
To see how our padded-wood cushion
supports are constructed, click
here.
Details
about our webbing suspension,
which provides softer support below the seat
cushions: It consists of two
layers of high-quality, full-width synthetic
webbing affixed to a sturdy oak frame.On top of
that goes a layer of extra-heavy-duty olefin
fabric, with a band of resilient webbing at the
rear, and with coarse-textured surface facing up,
to resist slipping on the part of the cushions
that rest on this suspension. This frame is
separate from the main sofa frame and is easy to
lift out for adjustments, for repair, or for
disassembling the frame for moving. To see how
that suspension is constructed, click on the link
just above, and scroll to near the bottom of the
page. We can send you a sample of the webbing
material at no charge on request. If at any time
you want greater firmness and/or higher support,
old towels or other material could be inserted
between the upper and lower levels of the
webbing. The webbing suspension is covered by our
standard ten-year warranty. NOTE: If you are
ordering without having had a chance to come to
our showroom, or without trying our sample
cushion platform, keep in mind that you can
easily convert from one kind of base to the
other: You could get the standard firm base at
first, and (if it still seems too firm after a
couple of weeks) order the webbing suspension
later, and simply lift the firm base out of the
frame and replace it with the webbing suspension.
