Heavy Lifting

Over the weekend some good friends of mine gave us their old futon. TR has had an ancient sofa in his room for a bed for quite some time now. While it was perfectly functional for awhile, most furniture doesn’t hold up well when large teen-age boys throw themselves on it repeatedly.

It’s a large, heavy wood framed futon, so despite the fact our friends live one block over and another block down from us, it still took a couple weeks of planning and begging favors from another friend to get hit here. It wouldn’t fit in anyone’s van, and carrying it that far was out of the question also, at least to those involved who would be doing the carrying. I vetoed the idea of strapping it to the roof of the Buick, which was the source of a lot of debate and animosity. If one doesn’t recognize the inherent foolishness of such an idea naturally, no amount of explanation will do any good.

On Saturday it all finally worked out and the loan of a truck for a little while accomplished the shift. I graciously gave up my van’s garage space for temporary storage. On Sunday we tackled the task of moving it upstairs.

The first step was removing the old sofa from TR’s room. It wasn’t easy, but we finally figured out how many of the bottom legs to unscrew and just what tilt would get it through the doorway, 90 degrees to the right and down the hallway, another 90 degrees right and half a flight of stairs down, out the front door, more steps, and back in to the garage. Then another half hour to clean up the assorted laundry, old dishes, dust, crumbs and very teeny tiny lego model building materials we found underneath and behind it. We were finally ready for the last step.

You would think a futon frame would be easier to move than a sofa. You would think the folding and unfolding aspect would give a little more leeway to maneuver through the doorways and such. You would think it just wouldn’t be that difficult. If you thought that though, you would be wrong.

Did I mention it was a heavy wood futon frame. Did I mention really heavy? Did I mention the beautiful outward curved armrests that I’m sure were added to the design for the specific purpose of making it not fit through any door opening.

We got it up and through the front door. We got it up the inside steps. We got it turned and aimed down the hallway. Then we got it stuck.

We tried removing some doors. We tried shifting other furniture around and out of doorways to make a three point turn. We trapped SW in one bedroom holding up a mirror that didn’t want to stay attached to a dresser without the wall for support, until he called out “Um, did you guys forget me?” We studied the futon to see if it would come apart. Then we started trying to figure out what other room we could leave the damn thing in. We smashed two of my toes. We parked it in the hallway and gave up.

At least V and I gave up. TR never did. He sat down and stared at the thing. For a good half hour he just looked at it. Then he lifted one end, called us to help him, turned it just so, and we walked it right through the door. The way it finally just went right in seemed like nothing less than a miracle; as if by staring at it TR had somehow made it smaller, or the doors larger, or something. (V claims it was how he wanted to do it all along, but I’m not buying it.)

TR tells me this morning it was the best night of sleep he has had in awhile. I certainly hope so for his sake. My throbbing toes kept me awake for quite some time.  I should just be grateful it wasn’t a knitting finger though.

November 12th, 2007 Posted by Tracy | This "Is" My Life | one comment