Hey folks,
Long time listener first time caller. Well, not really, but I've searched the forums in the past when looking at estate sale furniture.

In any case, we're now at a point where we need to get some new furniture in our tv room. Our current setup is 2 H&M Recliners (estate sale find) that are wonderful, but they do not really fit in the room because we need to have them too far from the wall for a full recline. Additionally, the one of them broke. Cost to fix it is significant enough that when combined with the fact that they don't fit, we'd just like to get something new--that something being either a reclining couch or sectional, as they can be pushed much closer to the wall. Unfortunately, we're on a much tighter budget than when we initially were thinking about this, due to unforseen medical and funeral expenses, and some time off of work.

We've found a couple of Hooker reclining couches at an excellent retailer (an electronics store, but they carry a couple of lines of furniture) that are in our price range--going to look at them tonight. They look very nice, but I have some concerns about them, and any recliners in general:

1: I understand that Hooker is Chinese, but how is the construction and the materials?
2: Power vs. Manual mechanisms. My initial thought was to go Manual, less to break. But now I'm thinking that the power will actually be more reliable. Thoughts?
3: While we're not expecting this to last forever, can we reasonably expect it to last 10 years while maintaining comfort? We're not particularly hard on furniture, but we do have guests over frequently that tip the scales at 300lbs. No kids that will be abusing them for now, but in the future that should change.


The other general question, will I just be sorely disappointed in this price range (~$2500)? Our other sofa in the house was my grandparents from the 50's. No clue what brand, but it is a stellar sofa. The one that that replaced was a 100 year old sofa that was my great-grandparents, which was also awesome, but just time to get it out of the house (U-G-L-Y). Growing up, my parents had H&M and Stickley (Still do). My wife's parents were similar; their 30 year old leather couch is just now getting to the point where the leather is on its way out. Should we just save for a year and get H&M/Stickley/etc. instead of going down the budget route?

Another anecdote, we looked at what was at Costco and a LaZboy going out of business. Costco, hell no. LaZboy just seemed cheap to me, I would really look at that as a 3 year purchase.

Thanks in advance, everyone