The Great Couch Caper

OK. I’ve kept you waiting long enough. Let’s talk couch.

A while ago we received a matching couch, loveseat, and chair. It was the first time in our married life that our living room furniture matched 100%. It wasn’t the best fabric pattern, but you can’t argue with free. In retrospect, I could have covered it, but that’s getting off the point of my post.

We live in a 1933 bungalow, so our living room is fairly small. There’s not a lot of room for furniture, and the couch set took up every square inch of space and then some. We actually had the chair shoved into a corner that was never used and it was a sad sad state of affairs for our living room. But it matched. Our sad state of affairs was fully coordinated.

Sometime during the anticipation of Critter’s arrival I got the crazy notion that if we got rid of our couch, it would open up a world of room in our cramped quarters. We rarely get visitors in large quantities, so I figured we could make do with a love seat, chair, and recliner. I made my wonderful hubby drag our couch to the curb.

Big mistake. Bonehead started grumbling immediately. He couldn’t lie down. He couldn’t sleep on the couch to get away from my snoring (let it be known he snores too, it just doesn’t bother me). There’s not enough room. I think he was being a drama king because I tried it and there was plenty of room but then again I’m 5’3(AND A HALF)” tall, and he is darn near 6ft. He wasn’t happy with the couch scenario. I wasn’t happy with his grumbling. And we learned to live with it.

Now that I’ve filled you in on the history behind my story, I can bring you to more recent events. A couple of months ago, my mother-in-law ordered a new couch and loveseat for her TV room. This event of course led her to offer us her old couch. Hubby started salivating before she finished her sentence. Of course we will take it. This happens to be my beloved Bonehead’s prized napping couch. We go to his parents, his dad turns on either a football game or Nascar race depending on the season, and hubby grabs the giant Shrek pillow that’s migrated his way into their TV room thanks to the grandkids, folds it in about 5 different inconceivable ways and stuffs it under his head in order to begin the football/Nascar nap. Bonehead on the couch and his dad on the recliner soon emit rumblings consistent enough to cause the windows to vibrate- but again I’m losing my point.

The Nascar Nap Couch, of course we’ll take it. And the wing back chair they offered us, too. Why not get rid of the whole overstuffed set that’s too big for our living room and attempt to streamline the place? In anticipation of the arrival of our new (old) couch, we unloaded our love seat and chair to a new college student the entire week before. This event actually left us with only a recliner and lawn furniture for a whole week. But I didn’t really mind, because I was out of town with the boys. Bonehead didn’t even have to arm wrestle any of us for the recliner.

This past Saturday morning my in-laws arrived with the couch and chair. And we promptly began unloading, because, well, there was really nowhere for anyone to sit. Cushions first. Then the couch. It’s the first piece of furniture I’ve had to help move since I discovered I was pregnant with Critter. This sucker is big, and heavy to boot. We managed to get it out of the van and up to our doorway. Then the plan went hopelessly awry.

No one measured the couch to see if it would fit through our door. No one THOUGHT to measure it. Yeah. We’re a family full of higher than average IQ kind of people who pride themselves for being witty and intelligent. But like every finely tuned machine, sometimes we short circuit a bit.

We spent a great deal of time trying to make a 28 inch wide couch fit through a 26 inch door. At some point I fully expected Bonehead to start yelling, “Pivot! Pivot! PivAUGHT! PIV-AUGHT!” like Ross did on the episode of Friends when they got the couch jammed in the stairwell. Hubby described the incident like something straight out of Seinfeld. Either way, the couch was a no go. And, we ripped the cushion trying to get it un-jammed from our doorway. So, essentially, our in-laws drove a couch an hour and fifteen minutes to put it on our curb for the local garbage pick up on Thursday morning.

That’s right, we got to have a couch on our curb for darn near a week. I started to feel sorry for it, it was looking pretty rejected when no one would even pick it up for free.

We already gave our other furniture away, so now we have no couch, and no love seat. We do still have the recliner we originally had, the new (old) wingback chair, and we unearthed the glider/rocker from when Smooch was a baby (I prefer to snuggle in the recliner these days). Three mismatched chairs and a jumping thing for Critter to sit in. No couch potatoes here.

It’s actually not so bad- now that the initial panic of not having a couch has worn off.