I was hoping to find a sofa quickly for my daughter, who moved into her first apartment couchless. Before ordering the Ava, I called Grandin Road to ask about availability and was told that the blue sofa was in stock and would be the quickest to ship. Once I placed the order, I was given a delivery window of December 6-13. Each time I checked the order status the estimated delivery date was postponed. I called customer service to ask about the order status and, each time, was told the sofa would ship out that day. However, the order status continued to show as "in process" with a new delayed delivery date. I then found a sofa locally that was in stock and available to deliver the same day, so I used the Grandin road chat feature to cancel the order. The chat agent said they would email the warehouse about the cancellation. The next day, the order status still showed as "in process" with a new delayed delivery date. I then called Grandin road to cancel the order again with the same results. After canceling by phone the second time, I received a text message saying my order had shipped. I emailed Grandin road to let them know I had canceled the order, and the next day they charged my credit card for the sofa I had canceled four times. When I asked for a refund, I was told they would request one, but it could take a few weeks. Thankfully my credit card company was willing to reverse the charge, as I don't have confidence that grandin road would have handled the refund any better than they handled the order or cancelation. I am also relieved not to own a product from them. I recommend something other than Grandin road.

check out Lee industries & cisco furniture. I used to buy sofas from cisco when they were a start up company & they would do a lot of custom details (like bench seat or slipcovers). http://www.leeindustries.com/ProductShowThumbs.asp?id=101149117103177074142188090140238211183003042225189245094105076191040148021085180223&pg=all&kw=&w1=&w2=&d1=&d2= http://www.ciscobrothers.com/_catalog_81978/Sofas Quatrine would do bench seats & slipcovers for any of their sofas. http://www.quatrine.com/slipcovered_furniture/francis.htm On the lower end, I have seen similar at Crate & Barrel http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=931&f=35203 HTH

My daughter is giving us her old couch & loveseat. They are down with removable covers. My problem is the covers are red and have stains, she has five children, and they don’t match the rest of our living room. Can red be dyed another color like a brown or ?. I would really live to have them just not in red, help!

I had completely forgotten about this being a lake home so AnnKH had a great point about how a front garage would actually be a rear garage (or something like that). So I think the point about maximizing the views and accessibility on the lakeside is definitely more important that worrying about a 'snout' garage. But, here is our first floor floor-plan. We are on a 100' wide city lot (unfortunately no lake views) and this house is 71.5' wide. The deepest part of the house, not including porches is 41'8". It was deeper than I wanted, but the rooms in the middle of the house (closets, laundry, etc) don't need windows so I'm OK with it. Our second floor has three additional bedrooms plus a bonus/loft space. We've got 2 kids, ages 11 and 13. No basements here in Texas.