Guest Bedroom Update: Ikea Karlaby Purchase

Mr. 3 and I have been dragging our feet on getting the second bedroom ready.  It's supposed to be a home office/guest bedroom combo.  We bought a desk and a floor lamp to accomplish the home office part, but we haven't had the "bed" portion of the room figured out until this past weekend.  I had done a lot of research, shopping, and testing on sofa beds, futons, and daybeds which I will share in some upcoming posts, but I ultimately decided to go the Ikea route on this one mainly due to cost.  I decided I didn't want to invest tons of money on a bedroom solution that we may only use for a year or so, but I figured we could Craig's List the futon for a third of what we paid for it.  After some online perusing and testing this futon out in the Ikea Charlotte store at Christmas, we decided to purchase the Karlaby futon with the Killeberg mattress in the Ransta dark grey color.

Karlaby Sofa Bed
Image Source: Ikea

I went with the dark grey because it wouldn't show dirt like the cream option and it was the second cheapest cover option.  Since we aren't planning to have this piece of furniture long term like we would a real sofa or a legit bed, I decided I didn't want to spend an extra $70 for the grey tweed fabric, which was actually my favorite. 

We chose this futon over some of the other models because: (1) we could get the plush mattress option which felt waaaay better than Ikea's firm options which were horrible to sit on, let alone lay on, (2) the depth of the seat when set up as a couch was a super comfortable 41 inches, which means Mr. 3 and I can both lay on it to watch movies (which is excellent for snuggling), (3) the length of the couch at 78 inches means Mr. 3 can actually fit on it to have a nap (he is 6'2), and (4) you can unzip the futon cover from the top so that it folds down and converts to a mattress pad (which saved us the cost of purchasing a mattress pad and also storing one when not in use).

Now for the bad.  In typical annoying Ikea fashion, the futon size is somewhere between a full and a queen, but not exactly sure what size sheets will wind up fitting because the mattress is much thinner than your normal bed.  The frame was full of misdrilled holes that caused Mr. 3 and our friend Max, who came to help haul the bed from the car to the apartment, to proclaim I could not purchase anything from Ikea ever again (I told Max that there was a special place in heaven for a good friend like him and I would pray to make sure he got there.  Then, I rewarded both of them with a steak dinner, homemade mashed potatoes, and apple pie.).  I should also mention that Ikea is a horrible place to shop.  Much to our misfortune, the children's daycare area was closed which meant that all the children in the D.C. metro area were bouncing around the showroom, generally screaming at the top of their lungs, and spreading their germs around the store.  Finally, we had the worst customer service.  I wanted to ask a few questions to make sure I wrote down the location of the correct mattress we wanted to purchase.  It was like pulling teeth to get a sales associate to help us and when we finally got one to come over he was completely distracted....that may have been because he rammed a twin sized futon into the front of my shins.  He hit me pretty hard and now I have bruises.

Despite all the mishaps, I'm happy to finally have something in place for anyone who comes to visit and Mr. 3 is excited to have a place to nap!  Here's the finished result:

Please ignore the boxes on the left.  The room is still a work in progress.

I decided I didn't want to have to store anything besides the sheets for the futon, so I used two standard sized pillows and one small toss pillow to fill up the couch and tossed a quilt on the back.  The queen sized quilt and and standard shams are Kate Spade that I picked up at the end of last summer for a super steal at Bed Bath and Beyond.  Each sham was $8 and the quilt was $40.  I bought the pillow inserts for $15 each and the green toss pillow for $25 (it's Cynthia Rowley) at Home Goods.  We also bought sheets from Bloomingdale's for $40.

The mattress looks a bit thin in the picture because it is rolled and vacuum sealed for shipping and storage.  Other friends who have bought Ikea mattresses say that eventually it will fluff up.

Besides my horrible shopping experience and shin injuries, I'm pretty happy with the overall result and the fact that we only spent $350 on the futon itself plus about $136 for the bedding.  By shopping throughout the year, I was able to spread out the cost of the bedding so I didn't have to purchase everything all at once.  The futon can be sold for about $100-$125 and the bedding can be re-used in future homes.

Anyone else purchased the Karlaby or another futon from Ikea?  How did it work out for you?