N and I have long loved to walk into the Lovesac store in the mall. It’s one of those stores that has super cool products that you can look at and try out. They sell sacs, which are like beanbags but better, and sactionals, which are modular couches.
The thing that has brought us back again and again with the debate of should we or shouldn’t we, is the sactional. After many visits and much debate, we purchased a sactional last month. Let me explain a bit.
The sactional is a couch as I said but the cool part is how it works. It is made up of completely separate pieces. There are two types of pieces, sides and bottoms. They connect with pieces called shoes and clamps. The shoes are wooden squares with four holes in them. You can put as many bottom or side legs into the holes to connect them. The clamps connect the bottoms to the sides. In essence, they are basically Lego couches.
Here is a quick Intro video that they published explaining the basics.
Acquiring a Sactional
The first step to acquiring a sactional is to decide how many pieces to buy.
It is entirely up to you. There is no minimum purchase. Lovesac often suggests 4 bottoms and 5 sides as a standard set size but you can get as many or as few as you wish. Often there are sales for certain amounts of pieces such as, buy 8 pieces and get a certain percent off. When we purchased our sactional there was just such sale taking place so we purchased 4 bottoms and 6 sides.
The second step is to decide on a cover and filling.
This again is purely a preference. There are many different materials for the covers including leather, tweed, poly linen, padded velvet and more. We got a chocolate brown padded velvet cover as it is super snuggly, dark enough to not show dirt as quickly and did not cost extra. Other fabrics and covers are available but cost more. Another thing to note is that the covers are removable and machine washable. This was a huge deal for us as A is a darling baby who makes messes all the time. (In fact she spread cheese all over the sactional two days after we put it together for the first time.)
There are also a few options for fillings. Standard foam, which is the one we got, again at no additional cost. But if you want, they offer down blend or love soft as optional fillings, again these cost more.
The third step is to decide on special piece types or accessories.
They have many other choices including a roll top arm or wedge shaped seat. As well as many accessories. N and I got two cup holders and one table. These are special made to go on top of the bottom or side pieces.
The fourth step is to wait for the sactional to arrive.
They ship it directly to your door free of charge. It took a little less than a week for us to get the sactional. The sactional arrived over two days. The accessories arrived a few days later.
The fifth step is to assemble the sactional.
Many people are daunted by this task as it takes time and effort. If you want, you can pay Lovesac to assemble to sactional for you. N and I decided against this because we wanted to figure it out for ourselves as the whole point is that you can reassemble the sactional whenever you want. So we knew we would be dealing with it all eventually.
Lovesac has many videos explaining how to assemble the pieces. It takes a long time as each side is separate as is each bottom, seat and pillow. It took N and I a few hours. It was also difficult putting the pieces together the first couple of times. After three times, the wood and clamps seemed to stretch a little and it goes quite smoothly now.
