The Purple Couch Story

We’ve been toying around with the idea of replacing our two love seats with a sectional for quite awhile. We’ve loved our Ikea Ektorp love seats and wanted to find the same model sectional, even though this model is discontinued.

One of our love seats was a secondhand Facebook Marketplace find, and you’d never know by looking at it. I was fairly certain I could recreate the same magic with a sectional.

For about the past year, I’ve scoured Facebook Marketplace attempting to find a secondhand Ektorp sectional that was in great enough shape to immediately replace what we had. I wasn’t looking for another project.

I also knew I wanted to spend less than $200 and drive no more than an hour and a half from my house to retrieve it.

And on a random Thursday, Facebook Marketplace provided a listing for a $200 Ikea Ektorp sectional that appeared to be in great shape with the phrase “moving–make me an offer.” Though the color was advertised as “gray,” which wasn’t my favorite, I was fairly confident I could find a new cover on eBay and discard the offending cover at some point. I messaged the owner (located an hour and a half away) and set up a time to pick it up.

When we arrived, the couch appeared to be sort of a funky shade of gray. In fact, my initial thought was, “Huh, I didn’t think Ikea made a cover in that particular shade of gray. But what do I know?”

As we started taking apart the sectional and removing the covers, I noticed the tag on one of the covers appeared almost purple. In the haze of snagging a sectional in incredible condition for only $150, I truly didn’t really think much of it.

That is, until I got it home and ran the cover through the wash. I hung the cover up to dry, and was immediately hit with the realization that I had purchased a purple couch.

To confirm, I pulled the model number off the sectional cover and discovered the cover was the same beige cover I had on my love seats. That, plus the purple tag told me all I needed to know: Someone had attempted to dye this cover.

Look, props for creativity. I love that someone was attempting to make their home unique to their tastes.

But we just aren’t purple couch people.

I jumped on eBay and ordered the cheapest “brand new” cover I could find: a yellow plaid cover, that, ironically, is on two of my mothers’ sofas and had been on the receiving end of some of my teasing. But economy has a way of helping things grow on you. And that yellow cover seemed an absolute delight in comparison to the purple DIY-dyed cover.

I also snagged a secondhand beige cover off eBay for only $33. It was in nearly perfect condition. I’ll swap the two out with each washing cycle (approximately every six weeks).

All in, we spent less than $500 to get a sectional that works better for our family. By comparison, a new Uppland sectional from Ikea, which is the line that replaced Ektorp, is anywhere from $1,400 to $1,700, depending on cover choice.

So what will we do with the purple cover? That is on my summer project list. The cover is in fabulous shape, so I would love to try to dye it to see if I can make it a color that is more suitable to our style. I would love to see if I can somehow create a muddied green color. I’ll have to study a bit of color theory to see what sort of concoction I can make.

In the meantime, we are loving this new-to-us sectional. I’ve found Rob stretched out asleep on it more than a few times since we purchased it. And we’re all able to enjoy family movie nights a little better now with that extra corner seat.

Do you love the yellow cover? Tell me what you think in the comments!