Downtown Furniture

Downtown Furniture sells home furnishings for living, dining and bedroom rooms from St. George Boulevard. Upholstered furniture is the hardest category in the store to judge by looking, because everything that determines how long a sofa lasts is sealed inside it.

The wider picture

There are three layers to a sofa and each has a quality range. The frame is the skeleton: kiln-dried hardwood joined with corner blocks, dowels or mortise and tenon is the durable construction, while stapled softwood, particleboard or engineered panel is the inexpensive one. Kiln drying matters because a frame built from lumber that has not been dried will shrink after assembly and loosen its own joints - a particular concern in a climate this dry, where the ambient moisture content is lower than most furniture is built to.

The suspension sits on the frame. Eight-way hand-tied springs, where each coil is tied to its neighbors in eight directions, is the traditional high-end system and is labor intensive. Sinuous or serpentine springs, S-shaped wires running front to back, are the common middle ground and perform well when the gauge is heavy and the spacing close. Webbing alone is the least durable. Above that sits the cushioning, usually polyurethane foam specified by density in pounds per cubic foot, which predicts how long it holds its shape, and by firmness, which is a separate measure describing how it feels. A high-density foam wrapped in polyester fiber or down is the construction that keeps its shape; low-density foam collapses regardless of how firm it felt in the showroom.

More on this: upholstery and furniture repair shops and historic downtown St. George. The directory lists all Furniture Stores.

Nearby: Sunburst Shutters St. George, FS Coffee Co, Cappeletti's Restaurant.