Building the World’s Biggest Sofa: An R29 Editor’s Honest Albany Park Couch Review

Something you should know about me before I launch into what will ostensibly be a sofa review (be patient!) is that there are few instances in which I will turn down free stuff. Free snacks? Give them to me. Free clothing? I’ll wear it to my wedding. And a free couch that looks nice, has great reviews, and hasn’t been sitting on a street corner in the rain for the better part of a week? You’d have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. So, when Albany Park generously offered me the opportunity to review one of its bestselling Kova sofas, I said "yes" faster than a Bachelor contestant hoping to secure that sweet, sweet spinoff money six months down the line.

I chose the Kova Pit sofa, an oversized six-piece sectional that can be configured to fit practically any setup without tools. Since my gross, practically pathological lust for anything with a $0 price tag is already well-documented, only one question remained: Does this stunning yacht of a sofa live up to the hype?

Generally speaking, my means of acquiring furniture is twofold. My preferred method is to visit an antique center and purchase something that looks great and cannot be sat on, cannot have a drink put on it (even with a coaster), needs to be positioned far from sunlight, and probably shouldn’t be looked at, either, just in case. The method I prefer less (but rely upon just as much) is to buy an inexpensive and not nearly as beautiful replacement for the Victorian-era furniture piece that has metamorphosed into a pile of dust. 

As such, I breathed a sigh of relief upon ordering my Albany Park sofa, which required little more than choosing the model and fabric (I chose olive velvet, one of five available velvet shades and nine total fabric choices, including tempting new white boucle and camel velvet options), and selecting between an ottoman with storage or one without (I opted out). Since I hadn’t seen the sofas in person before ordering, I was grateful that there was only one fill option — a hypoallergenic, fully vegan down alternative — ensuring that I wouldn’t find myself picking tiny, razor-sharp feathers out of my carpets, clothing, and hair until death’s sweet release. It took about a week for my order to ship, and I received the couch two weeks later. 

Do you love cardboard? Do you wish you had enough of it to build a nearly life-sized replica of your own home? Well, boy howdy, do I have a sofa recommendation for you. The Kova Pit was brought into my home by a team of two movers in an astounding nine separate boxes, each large enough to classify as a small city. Once out of the boxes, however, the sofa’s component pieces were relatively manageable: There were lower parts, upper parts, and cushions — all of which came ready to be assembled. When the 10-mile-high pile of cardboard was little more than a distant memory, it was time to get to work. 

If you happen to know any adults in need of new furniture but simultaneously cursed with T. Rex-style arms and surprisingly limited fine motor skills — points weirdly child-sized finger directly at my own face — may I humbly suggest the purchase of an Albany Park Kova Pit sofa? You could probably blindfold a person of average height, arm length, and physical ability, and they could put this couch together. 

The lower portion of the couch and the upper portion — the seat and the back, if you’re nasty — connect via a metal track (think the mechanism by which the drawers in your kitchen or a dresser slide out). Once aligned, you simply slide the track portion of each upper section into the corresponding section on the seat and give it a good shove to ensure it’s fully in place. Then, you add the cushions, assemble the individual sections (the Kova Pit I ordered has six in total, while the larger Kova Grand Pit has eight) in your preferred configuration, and voila! You have a truly gigantic sofa to enjoy without so much as breaking out a screwdriver or wrench from the Caboodles makeup organizer some of us may or may not be using as a toolbox. 

Once fully assembled, the behemoth-ness of the Kova Pit cannot be overstated. I measured my space prior to ordering the Kova Pit but was still shocked at just how much room the thing takes up. The sofa is 10 feet wide, 6.5 feet deep, and just over 3 feet tall. So if you don’t have the better part of a room to dedicate to your couch, it may not be the sofa for you. 

My main goal in ordering the Kova Pit was to bring an actually comfortable piece of furniture into my home for once in my goddamned life — and I succeeded. This thing just hits different than, well, every other sofa I’ve ever owned. The back? Supportive. The cushions? Fluffy. The fabric? Soft and luxe without that weird, draggy feeling velvet can sometimes have on the skin (and easy to clean, if anyone happens to get ketchup on it, or so I hear). The size? Large enough that you could invite at least three professional basketball players over for a sleepover, and you wouldn’t even have to touch each other if you were still trying to feel things out. 

[Assumes influencer voice]: So, since a lot of you have been asking, I will address your questions about whether or not the Albany Park Kova Pit is as nappable as it seems. Thanks to a lot of research, a lot of hard work, a lot of episodes of Yellowjackets, and the support of my community, I can definitively say that it is. If I were to, for whatever reason, immolate my bed on a whim, I would happily spend my nights sleeping on the Kova Pit. 

Even a nearly perfect sofa will have a few things that aren’t ideal about it. My primary point of contention with the Kova Pit is that my cat, Moose, has fallen in love with it. Moose, a deranged little gargoyle I found on the street, has bad back legs after being attacked by another cat and can’t really jump. The relatively low height of the Kova Pit has made it possible for her to get up on the couch without incident, spreading her fur all over it with both great ease and relish. Of course, if your living quarters are not home to a perpetually shedding drool goblin, this may not be as much of an issue for you. And, of course, lint rollers still exist.

The other issue I’ve had with the sofa is a pretty niche one: If you’re looking to make your living room look perfect on social media and care about things like perfectly fluffed couch cushions, this sofa may wear down your resolve. Does it look nice, even when the cushions are a bit uneven? Yes. Are you going to get them to look completely smooth and gorgeous without a team of professional pillow-fluffers at the ready? Unlikely. Hell, I knew I had to write this review for months. and I still couldn’t get those suckers fully smooth. But, you know, if that’s the worst thing that happens to you in the course of a day, consider yourself lucky. In the immortal words of our patron saint of Poosh, there's people dying, Kim.

Also, if you're thinking of ordering the Kova Pit, start budgeting for throw pillows and blankets now — you’re going to need a metric ton of them to adequately cover the vast prairie of this couch. The seven 18-inch pillows I have look positively lilliputian compared to the sofa, like the furniture equivalent of André the Giant holding that beer can.

If you’re looking for a couch that looks like you bid tens of thousands on it at Sotheby’s and will have your guests oohing and ahhing over its intricate details, well…this ain’t it. If you’re looking for the indoor equivalent of one of those lake trampolines, however, you may have found the sofa of your dreams in the Albany Park Kova Pit. From the feel of the fabric to ease of assembly to pillowy comfort that makes me want to face-plant directly into my sofa at all hours of the day, I’m thrilled with the Kova Pit and may even buy the accompanying storage ottoman, just to ensure no portion of my living room is un-couched. So lounge on, my sleepy comrades. I believe in you.