LoveSac: A Review

Back before Mr. L and I moved to Hawaii, I took a little trip up to Maryland to visit him while he was doing some training.  We were able to play the tourist and see lots of different things around the area and I was so thrilled we were able to share in that experience.  (I just remembered that I never even recapped that trip -- eek!  Maybe I should!)  One weekend while I was there, we headed off to one of the malls close to him and wandered around for a while.

At some point in our trip, we came across a small-ish furniture store tucked in around the other stores in the mall and decided to walk in and check it out.  The store's name was LoveSac, and we quickly saw what was so awesome about the "Sactionals" style furniture -- you can rearrange them into countless different formations!

On top of that, the covers on the furniture are 100% changeable and washable.  So if we felt like having a leather couch one year and a red couch the next, we could do it a lot more cheaply than buying a whole other brand new piece of furniture -- pretty cool!  You can check out the cover selection here.

We both loved the concept, especially since we have been (and will continue to be) moving so much over the course of Mr. L's relationship with the military.  Not only is it easier to move than a traditional couch, we can set it up to fit whatever room we decide to put it in inside each new home.  It certainly didn't hurt that the Sactional arrangements we sat on were pretty dang comfy too!

Flash forward to the beginning of summer 2013: our current couch had been around for a long time (well before we got married and into Mr. L's bachelor years) and was showing a bit of wear, and we'd been told time and time again (in particular by moving companies) that it was a pretty dang big piece of furniture.  After a few weeks of thinking on the situation, we decided to take the plunge, donate our old couch, and order a Sactional 5 Series arrangement from Lovesac (4 bases, 5 sides total -- specifically this set, but it was on sale and had an extra side thrown in for free).

I'm not going to lie, it took a long time for our furniture to get here.  The shipping part was actually pretty fast (and by the way, shipping is free in the continental U.S., although sadly not for us), but unfortunately, the covers that we'd chosen, Chocolate Velvish, were on back-order, so it ended up being a couple extra months before the furniture could even be shipped to us.  We knew that going in though, so we waited patiently for our new Sactional to arrive.

Finally, UPS delivered it one afternoon, and we opened a couple of the boxes to check out our purchase (we weren't putting it together yet because we still needed to move our old couch out).  What we saw in the boxes wasn't quite what we were expecting though, unfortunately.  Instead of the Chocolate Velvish covers, we'd received boxes full of the Bidness Grey Tweed color.  While the grey is a lovely color, it wasn't what we ordered and it definitely did not go with the rest of our living room decor.

Comparison of the Bidness Tweed and the Chocolate Velvish

When we originally ordered the Sactional, we'd received an email from the client relations manager at LoveSac named Ellie who told us to contact her if we ever needed anything, so I shot her a quick little email that night to let her know what was up.  Not only did she offer to send the correct covers to us free of charge, but she said we could go ahead and keep the entire Bidness Grey Tweed set on top of it!

Needless to say, we were pretty floored since the cover sets aren't cheap.  That level of customer service was outstanding, and we really appreciated the efforts Ellie made to keep us informed (I'd sent her lots of emails throughout the entire waiting, shipping, and ordering the new covers process).  She is awesome!

While we waited for our new covers to come in, we decided to go ahead and set up the Sactional with the grey covers to make sure everything worked fine.  And I'm going to be completely honest -- setting this couch up was HARD.  In the showroom, the pieces fit pretty effortlessly together, but it wasn't until we were setting ours up that we realized it was because those pieces were all nice and broken in after months or possibly years of being arranged and rearranged.  Ours was brand spankin' new from the factory, and there were times we had to walk away and literally recovery our energy after trying to force some pieces together (it probably didn't help that we were both sick, but it was seriously TOUGH).  It can be overall very frustrating, especially when two pieces are SO CLOSE to fitting together but just won't seem to slide in and behave, but we stuck with it and managed to get that daggum thing set up!

Just starting out...

Halfway there...

My advice would be to watch the assembly video here and make sure you know exactly how you're going to arrange it first.  Otherwise, it might be a good idea to have more than two people on hand.  Three would work great!  And although LoveSac does say that you don't need tools to assemble the Sactionals, keep a hammer on hand.  It helped us bang the handles when they were too tough to go down and it helped us pull them back up after we realized we'd made a mistake, haha.  Feel free to leave a comment if you have questions about the set up.  I'd be happy to answer!

A bit more in-depth of the components

Close up of the metal clamps that help hold the furniture together

Thankfully, the couch fit perfectly in our tiny living room and we loved how it looked and sat.  It isn't the most comfortable piece of furniture you'll ever own, but it's comfy enough for us, especially when you factor in the re-arrangebility (which is hard, no doubt, but still doable) and the ability to change the covers.

After another couple of weeks, our new covers came in, but we were definitely not excited to re-cover the Sactional again since it would involve essentially taking apart the whole couch (ugh) so we put it off for a while, haha.  We also noticed that the covers sent to us this time weren't called Chocolate Velvish, but Rhinoplush instead, so we suspect that there may have been a cover mix-up in the reorder since they have another fabric called Rhinoplush.  However, the covers felt perfectly fine to us and the color was exactly what we wanted, so we were fine with keeping them.

Fabric close up

After another week or so of staring at the new covers and the old covers, we finally got fed up and just went with it!  It took a couple of hours of good, solid effort (and it was actually slightly easier than the first time, giving us hope that it'll get progressively easier each time it's reassembled) but it was actually worth it in the end.  We were absolutely reassured that the new covers were the covers for us.  They're so soft and almost velvety smooth, and they even made the couch much more comfortable to us to sit on.  I could cuddle with the cushions on that Sactional all day long!  We're in the process of finding some nice throw pillows to go with the Sactional (the smaller ones pictured will probably get recovered eventually, and I'm still feeling out the bigger ones), so hopefully we'll get it looking super snazzy soon!

And, of course, our family wouldn't be completely 100% happy with the purchase if the dogs didn't love it too.  Thankfully, they gave it their seal of approval immediately!

Liam in his favorite spot -- he can peek out the blinds from here

Overall, Mr. L and I are both really happy with our purchase from LoveSac.  I think this set of furniture will be a great addition to our home for many, many years to come, and we're excited to imagine it heading with us to each of the new places we'll be living in!

Set up with our coffee table that may or may not stay in the living room since there's not much room

Have you ever heard of LoveSac before?  What do you think of the concept?

UPDATE:  At this point in our period of LoveSac ownership (mid-October 2013), we've assembled this couch for a total of 3 times, the last time being when we moved in the new house.  For that assembly, Mr. L and a friend were able to put it together super easily and in no time at all which was a great comfort to us.  Unfortunately you still have to suffer through the first couple of assemblies, but we at least know now it will never be as bad as the first time again!

Disclaimer: This post consists entirely of my own thoughts and opinions.  No one at Lovesac encouraged me to write it or offered compensation for a post.  I'm sure they don't even know I exist aside from their wonderful client relations manager Ellie, of course!  :)

Follow