Kayla B.
Yelp
I really wanted a couch, but I didn't want to pay an extraordinary amount of money for it - which left trying to find scratch and dent furniture or clearanced furniture. I was okay with that. However, it turns out that that's difficult to do in the area as many smaller furniture stores don't tend to keep those types of clearance furniture around. My search led me to Homemakers Furniture, and I've established that it's definitely the largest furniture store in Central Iowa.
I uploaded some pictures to give a general idea of how huge this store is. And it's HUGE. They have multiple sets of bathrooms throughout the store because of how large it is. There are rows and rows upon rows of options to choose from. They are semi-organized by type, so you'll tend to find all sectionals in one area while all dinner tables will be in another. They tend to organize their furniture by "theme", so the sectional will have nearby rugs, decor, tables, and more that match. It takes up more room and makes looking for a good sectional more difficult, so I wish they wouldn't do that, but I understand why they do.
Sales associates here are paid based upon commission, so keep that in mind when looking. They can do orders over the phone, so if you want more time to think about a purchase, ask for their business card and the item number, and you can always order via phone at a later time. There's a small dining area that offers free food as well. They have free lemonade, coffee, and cookies. The food needs to stay in that area, but hey, for free food, it's pretty awesome! (They are yummy cookies too)
The Clearanced Area and the regular-priced area are two separate entities. That means if you buy something from the Clearance area, you'll need to do a separate purchase for the regular-priced area. Just something to keep in mind. I'm not sure how the delivery fee would work for those two different items. Delivery to Ames was $60 for anything I was looking at.
I spent a lot of time in the Clearance area, and they actually Clearance things here. It isn't some fake clearanced prices. There will be items that are marked down to $99 from $600. (Normally these are single pieces of sectionals that they have left over). There were couches available in the $200 and sectionals available in the $450 range. There were regular, armless chairs in the $99 range and recliners in the $200 range. The purchasing experience was nice, and Ruby was really friendly to deal with. She answered my questions while also giving me space to make my decision. When I asked for items in a specific price range, she had no issue helping me find those.
I ended up deciding to think about the couches and sectionals I was thinking of purchasing, but I fell in love with a clearanced end table. Since it would fit in my car, I decided to purchase it then and take it home. This is where things got a bit more annoying. Up until this point, the only time that had been wasted was of my own choice because I was looking over furniture. Once I decided I wanted to purchase, I had to wait 15 minutes just to purchase the item. While purchasing it, the credit card screen froze, so I was told to go up-front to purchase. Once I made it upfront, it was another 15 minutes in line waiting to check-out. It's possible I was just here at the wrong time, but it was extremely frustrating when I just wanted to purchase and leave. I ended up spending slightly over 30 minutes just waiting in lines to be helped.
Once I had the purchase, you just drive around to the back, and give them your order number. They'll load up your purchase into your car (they also offer delivery). The guy who helped me was very nice, and the item made it just fine back to my place.
Final thoughts: It's a great furniture store, and they offer some of the best prices that I've seen. Unfortunately, the lines were also a bit longer than they had to be which led to frustration. As long as you're willing to spend a bit of time here, it's definitely a place I'd recommend shopping at.