Some Details about the Materials & Construction of this Furniture, and How it's Assembled

Please keep in mind that this page deals only with construction details of our furniture. To go to our home page (if you haven't already been there) for pictures and features of our full product line, click here.

If you receive delivery via our vehicle (normally only in the Northern North Carolina-to-Philadelphia-to-north suburban New York corridor in the eastern U.S.), the delivery person would bring it in and assemble it. If your furniture arrives via common carrier, what you do is shown by the arrows below, which normally doesn't even require a tool (the bolts can usually just be turned by hand). In just a few minutes, the furniture can be together well enough to withstand decades of heavy use, yet it can be easily disassembled and re-assembled for moving, at any time.

Every frame has been pre-assembled and carefully checked, together with the cushions, before shipping or delivery.

Steel tee-nuts are already firmly embedded in solid oak parts. These parts have been securely screwed (with high-quality steel zinc-plated screws) and glued (with aliphatic resin glue) to solid oak side members. Solid hardwood (sometimes including cherry, mahogany or walnut) end blocks and support ledges are already screwed and glued to solid oak front rails and to solid oak back frames (or to 3/4" hardwood plywood, if you choose the all-wood back). The eye bolts and the front rail dowels are 1/4"-diameter steel.

The standard surfaces that the seat cushions rest on are made of 3/8" plywood, resting on three heavy oak supports (each 13/16" thick by an average of 1 5/8"" wide) under each seat cushion, with about 1/2" of padding on top of the seat deck and then a covering of heavy upholstery fabric. Combined with our standard (medium-firm, high-quality) cushioning, this provides non-saggy support that most of our customers find to be quite comfortable, without a feeling of hitting bottom; and it's a pleasant contrast with the too-soft support that is to be found in most furniture in normal stores (soft to begin with, not to mention what it will be like after years of use). For those who want softer support, we also offer a heavy-duty webbing suspension.

You won't find frame components made of particle board or assembled with staples, such as is part of mass-production of throw-away furniture. Construction like that has become the norm in American furniture stores these days, even for higher-priced lines; for more on this, click on the first link at the bottom of this page. There are good reasons why we are happy to show the construction of our furniture, and why other manufacturers don't do so.

Note that the front rail of the Virginia model has curvature at the bottom edge, which is not the case for the other models (though it can be ordered on the other models for a $15 extra charge).

The corner unit of one our sectional sofas

Each side section will be bolted to this corner unit, with the same eye bolts shown above. This is the bulkiest component (33" x 33" x 24 1/2") of one of our sectional sofas, the way a sectional arrives to the customer (everything else is flat pieces or cushions). However, if the entrance is too small for this to be carried in whole, even this unit can be easily disassembled into two smaller sections, by unscrewing six philips-head screws, and then re-assembled once inside the destination room..

l000 pounds of weight on an individual seat, plus another test of indestructibility

25 forty-pound bags of topsoil, carefully stacked on top of a Virginia model sofa suspension as shown, caused only minor sag after 24 hours. The weights were then shifted onto a California model frame. The bags rested there for 26 days. There was still no damage to the frame and less than 1/2” of sag.

Our “Teenager landing on it” tests were performed by a 190-pound male, giving a beating to both a California model sofa frame and a Virgiania sofa frame. These tests each included 35 backward lunges onto the sofa seat while carrying a 40-pound bag, and 50 lunges without it. They had no detectable effect on either frame.

Subsequent prudent economizing based on the above tests: Since very few of our customers will be subjecting our furniture to such stress, we have reduced the amount of the valuable oak wood used in the support slats by 11%- 19% since the above tests. For those who anticipate extra-heavy loads on their furniture, additional support can be ordered.

Cushion Filling:

Our standard seat and back cushions are filled entirely with high-quality polyurethane foam, shaped to give it the gently rounded contours you see in our pictures.. We don't use cotton batting, which for some people is allergenic, anywhere.. We don't use typical polyester batting (which is very widely used in mass-market furniture) except on arm pillows or on the sides of our fully-upholstered model's frames, since it doesn't hold up under long-term weight of sitting nearly as well as high-quality polyurethane foam; the only polyester batting we use on cushions is a very special, luxurious, more durable kind that we use for our softer cushion option.

To understand about foam quality, one needs to know about its density. Density of foam relates directly to durability, since it refers to the amount of supporting, strength-giving material, as opposed to air pockets, that makes up the cushion filling. Our seat foam is at least 2.25 pounds per cubic foot in density, compared with the 1 to 1.5 lb. density used in typical mass-market furniture.

The other major quality, comfort, results from the way the foam compresses when sat on. This in turn is affected by flexibility of the foam (determined by its chemical makeup) and also by the density mentioned above. Inexpensive, low-density foam gets its support from a less flexible material composition. What keeps you from hitting bottom with cheaper foam is stiffness, which is not only less comfortable but also less durable than support provided by greater density.

Higher-density foam can be more flexible, since it gets its basic support much more from compaction of material rather than from stiffness of the foam. The additional solid material within the foam (as opposed to air) being pressed together resists more and more, the farther it is compressed, preventing you from hitting bottom. This greater flexibility gives it a softer feel for the first few inches of sinking in, molding nicely to your contours. And this softer feel combined with progressively firmer support explains why the great majority of people find our cushioning very comfortable even when it rests on a padded wood base, avoiding the normal problem of springs' sagging. In simple terms, this foam combined with the underlying firm support just plain feels good to your bottom and back.

So why don't all manufacturers use foam like this? It's more expensive, both for buying it and for shipping the completed (heavier) product. The furniture industry is extremely price-competitive, and most customers don't look past the price and initial appearance and feel of a sofa, so most manufacturers aren't willing to pay for the higher costs of such foam.

To go to the page that explains why it's worth paying more for our furniture than for ordinary furniture, click here.

For more details on assembling a frame, click here.

To go to Comfy 1 home page, click here.