San Diego living room

We have a very large room that flows directly into our kitchen. One wall is split evenly between a TV and a fireplace, and that is the focal point. We have three dogs, and two of them are schnauzer mixes. They are hard on our furniture but only from a scratching perspective. One of them is nimble enough to perch on the back of the couch by the window and look at the wildlife, which leads to great excitement, and unfortunately that is where most of the wear and tear seems to come from. Will add a photo in next post showing some representative wear. We will consider putting a blanket along the top of the future furniture to add some protection. It isn’t practical at this point to retrain.

I am just starting to reconsider how to refurnish this room, having just gotten rid of half the seating, with the intent to change what remains as well. The room is very wide, and while bright, we had solar film placed on the windows to reduce glare and UV. There is about 20 feet of usable width and 11 feet of usable depth. Budget is $8000 including shipping, and I live in San Diego. The style of our home is transitional.

Some things I learned from reading here already:
Sectionals cost a lot more than separates
Unprotected leather may paradoxically wear better than protected
Buy Made in the USA if possible
Be prepared to deal with some potential hassle if buying from non-local dealer

What kind of configurations do you think we should consider? Out of this whole space I would like to get “8+ seats”. That could be two sofas and a loveseat for example. A giant U would be great but prohibitively expensive I suspect. Where will I find the most value in my price range? My preference would be leather, but I want to be strategic about that choice and get something with some resistance to the wear issue from my dogs. I can handle cleaning and conditioning every 6 months.Attachment 11810

Thanks for taking some time to share your ideas with me.

Attachment 11811Here is the damage along the top of the previous piece that I want to prevent in the future. Like I said, perhaps simplest solution is to just put a blanket up there.

I like your idea of the U-Shaped Sectional, I think that will fill the space well and have a continuity that the two sofas / one loveseat will not. I'd not worry about the leather too much from the dogs, those little wear marks can be fixed and I see more sun fade than anything else on that top casing. One thing you can also do is order a spare back casing made with the unit, where the one pup usually lays. One gets damaged, you have another one ready to go. I'd probably suggest you look at Bradington Young from the brands I am familiar with as they will come closest to your price point and still are a USA-made quality unit. Here's their sectional layout schematic:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/images2.epr...schematics.pdf

Thanks, will head over to the quote area and see how that prices out. Do I just keep adding armless components until I get to the desired total width? I can already see we would find the Hanley style appealing (square lines). I am drawn to the right angle corner and the RAF Chaise as well.

I am starting to get the sense our budget won't accommodate a full refurnishing of this room, though I am interested in the quote to see how far off we are. If that is the case I'd love some ideas about how to do this in stages. I've attached a sketch of our room. Attachment 11817

As shown in the earlier photo, we have removed the furniture on the window side of the room and are just left with a rather old sectional and some accessories. The layout shown here worked pretty well for us, but fully refurnishing would have given us the option to reconsider the whole layout rather than just one piece of it (hence the idea of a large U-shaped arrangement). Rather than have two separate seating areas (as shown), the idea of one larger seating area is appealing.

The sectional we're probably going to have to keep for at least a little while works best in its current spot, but that is also the most used spot. It is hard to stomach the idea of spending a lot of money for seating on the other side of the room which will get used less, and despite the window tint, is the spot most vulnerable to sun damage and my dogs. So maybe it makes sense to move this sectional across the room even if the configuration isn't ideal. If we did that, what kind of configuration oriented on the TV would make the most sense, both for now and as the initial purchase of a whole room refurnishing? "Another sectional" may be the least creative but most obvious idea. Perhaps I'll add another sketch showing that scenario.

Yes, pretty much you can add pieces to get to a configuration you like, however buy the least number of frames in a configuration to keep the price down. A two-piece sectional vs a three-piece in the same size will cost roughly $ 1,000 more in the 3-piece build. HOWEVER, some of those larger component builds may not fit on your room, so doorways and ingress have to be taken into account.

Don't buy a sectional in different stages (buy portions of it now, then add to it later). Won't work, because there are +/- 2" production variables from one unit to another across the industry. You would have to send the existing sectional back to the factory in order for them to add onto it, then you also have dye-lot / sun UV fade issues which will compromise the look.