Epiphany on the Couch

Okay so I wasn't exactly ON the couch when this epiphany hit, but rather it was about the couch. As I was sitting in my comfy chair, cuddling with my baby (Joe...don't tell Erin!) watching home improvement shows I happened to look out my dining room window. It was at that moment that I realized just how wide that window happens to be. Now, I should be well aware of how wide that window is, since I put an air-conditioner in it every summer and take it out every fall! However, being inattentive to detail, I missed it somehow.

Now, it is important that I back up for a minute here. One year and eight months ago, Jeff's grandmother moved from her one-bedroom apartment into a studio apartment in a senior housing center. Her rather large couch was not going to fit, and having spent the money some years ago to get a very nice couch, she did not want to just donate it, so she asked if we might want it. At the time we had a hand-me-down that should have gone to the curb long before it was handed to us. It was a sleeper sofa, and it came into the house 5 years ago with much force and strong language on the part of Jeff and several of his rather hefty friends. Our house simply was not made for large items to come through the doors!

Moving on to the couch coming to our house. I called my Mom and arranged to have her meet me at Grandma's to get the couch in her truck and bring it to my house. A week or so before that, my Mom and I took a sledge hammer and various other tools to the hand-me-down sofa bed. Since it was so difficult to get into the house, we decided we would take it out the easy way! We sure did have fun! Jeff was mortified, as he really like the horrid thing. I assured him that it would be okay though, as Grandma was giving us her couch and soon he would have a much nicer, newer, cat hair free couch (I very much dislike cats but the former owners of said couch had 3) .

Now, remember how I said large items don't fit through the doors in our house? Yup! You guessed it...the new couch was too big to fit through the door. Our front entry consists of a door to the porch with a straight shot into the entryway, followed by a 90 degree turn into the house. The couch made it to the entryway, but would not turn the corner into the house. We tried in vain for about an hour to force it through, but it was not going. So...the very nice couch took up residence on the front porch.
This is the door to the entryway...the one the through which the couch would not fit!


















Back to the present. As I stared at the dining room window, I wondered if the couch would fit through it. HMMM!?!?! Finally, I got my tape measure and sure enough, there was almost a whole extra inch to spare. BUT, in order to have enough height, I would have to completely disassmeble the window. Oh, Kyle! I asked him if he wanted to help me with a crazy project, and knowing his mother well, he agreed. (I would have done it with or without him, but he knows it's easier to just agree up front than to get wrangled in later!) I did not relish the thought of carrying the couch from the front of the house to the back of the house, lifting it over my head and through the window, but that seemed the only way. Then it occurred to me that the middle (of 3) living room window might also be wide enough. It was! Thank God, because I forgot to mention earlier that it was only about 4 or 5 degrees outside.

After diassembling the window, with some difficulty, Kyle helped me navigate the couch through the window opening. All this time Jeff was upstairs sleeping. We got the window apart, the couch in, the window back together, and the furniture put back into the living room in just under one hour. When Jeff awoke and discovered the couch in the house, he asked how it came in. I told him through the window, to which he wondered if he dared ask how. I told him proabably not, and we left it at that. He did mention that he kept waking up, but was not sure why. Must have been my hammering to get the trim back on the window...LOL!

So now the couch is in the house and we have enough seating for all five of us without anyone on the floor! Amazing!
Yes, our little abode is a work in progress. The black "spot" on the wall is where the chimney from an old woodstove comes into the house. The discoloration on the wall marks where the surround was behind the woodstove. The crown moldings are down waiting for spring so I can finish stripping them and the ceiling is awaiting a finish after it had to be replaced due to the bathroom plumbing leaking through onto it. Eventually I will get it all back together, but doesn't the couch look nice there?

Here is the window through which the couch gained entry:
The one in the middle with just the sheer showing. Except for a few little dings in the finish, which needs to be stripped anyway, you would never know I took the whole thing apart!


The best moment during this whole process came when Kyle told me that he hoped we never had to take the window apart again. The look on his face as I reminded him that the couch would eventually have to be moved out again, was priceless!