Adventures in moving a sofa!

My wife and I recently bought a new sofa.

While I know this sounds fun and glamourous, it actually created much more work than I expected.

Our old sofa had served us well for many years. It was great for watching television, napping, serving as a bed when family members stayed at the house, acting as jumping pad for grandchildren and even taking on the role of a scratching post for our cat. That last part was frowned upon by my wife and me, but the cat had grown quite fond of it.

Our feline friend also enjoyed leaving her extra hair on the sofa, as well as knocking small items underneath it.

When my wife found a good deal on a sofa, she jumped on it (the deal, not the sofa) and even set it up so it would be delivered to our house.

“That sounds easy,” I said. “Now we just need to get rid of the old sofa, which shouldn’t be too hard.”

My neighbors had recently bought a second house down the street and had fixed it up for their son and some friends to rent and live in, and I thought they might need a sofa. We offered it to them and even had them look it over, and they said they would be very happy to take it.

Their father, who is also my jogging partner in the famous Athens Jogging Club, thought it was a good idea, but questioned if the sofa would fit down the stairs into the basement where the boys wanted it.

“That won’t be much of a problem,” I said confidently. “I think we can stand it up, turn it and get it down there just fine.” My neighbor worries too much (more than me!) and I thought he was just searching for a new subject to worry about.

More importantly, I wanted to get rid of our old sofa, so I wanted to make it work.

So, the next night, my neighbor and I carried the sofa outside my house, and then the boys from the new house showed up and we all carried the old sofa down the street to their home.

Carrying it was easier than finding someone who had a truck and the sofa isn’t very heavy, but I wondered what the other people on our street were thinking.

“Did they steal that and not have a getaway car?” one person may have thought.

“Are they taking that somewhere to burn it. Did some sports team win another championship?” another may have wondered.

“Do they not know what sofas are for?” others surely pondered.

When we got to the kids’ house, it was at first kind of difficult to get the sofa in the back door. We turned it and changed the angle and then finally got it inside. Hooray! We did it!

And then I saw the basement door.

“Oh no,” I thought to myself. “That is a tight turn and a low ceiling.” But I was determined to get the sofa into their basement, and after lots of hard work and turning, we finally got the sofa into the stairwell. After about 15 more minutes, we got it to the bottom of the stairs. And after about 20 more minutes, I had it perfectly wedged against the railing, the wall and the low ceiling so that it would not move at all.

“Hmmm, this may be a problem,” I thought to myself while sweat poured down my face. We tried to turn it, move it another way, stand it up and do anything else I could think of, but nothing worked.

So, we finally gave up and decided to take the sofa back up the stairs. The only problem was, it wouldn’t’ fit back up the stairs.

By this time I was ready to break the stupid thing in half, rip off the arms and do anything else to get rid of the sofa, but we finally pushed and turned it enough to get it to the top of the stairs.

And then, after about 30 more minutes of turning and pushing, we finally got it out of the stairwell and outside.

And that’s when I noticed how we has scrapped the new paint on the wall.

“Uh, I guess you were right about the sofa not fitting,” I said rather sheepishly. “And sorry about the wall.”

Thankfully, my neighbor didn’t care, so we all sat and talked for a bit and then I tiredly walked home, leaving the sofa in that yard. And a few days later, I borrowed a truck, and my daughter and I picked up the softa from the yard of that house and took it to a second hand store, which is what I should have done in the first place.

And now, we have our new sofa and all is right with the world again. The grandchildren love to jump on it, the cat likes to knock things underneath it, and we all like resting on it, just like I’m about to do right now. Life is good.