Upstairs Downstairs

Today, 3 runners ran (and cycled) to help Mrs A get her home ready for her husband to come out of hospital.

We met outside the house and had a quick discussion about how best to get the job done whilst also abiding by the new social distancing rules. I went into the house with Mrs A and keeping at least 2m away at all times, she led me round to show me the living room and the bedroom. We were to switch the furniture over, so everything from the bedroom upstairs needed to be in the living room downstairs and vice versa. This meant moving 1 Kingsize bed and mattress, 1 wardrobe, 2 bedside tables, 1 armchair, 1 two seater sofa, 1 three seater sofa, 1 coffee table, 1 rug and 2 storage cubes. I’m not going to lie I was concerned but Mrs A was sure we’d have it done in half an hour!

I went back outside to talk through a plan with JP & Emily whilst Mrs A retreated into the back of the house. We decided we would first move all of the smaller items respectively up or down stairs and tuck them away in other rooms to make space, then dismantle the bed to allow us room to bring the sofa’s straight up to their new home. Then re-assemble the bed and make the rooms back up as they were.

I’m happy to say the plan went very smoothly and everything seem to work just as we’d planned. Thankfully I had come prepared with screw drivers and allen keys so taking the bed apart was a doddle. The armchair was carried up then the wardrobe down. Both of these were heavy and cumbersome but we worked out our strategy for manoeuvring the two doorways, tight corner on the stairs and the hazards of lampshades and mirror on the wall (fixed with screws, we checked!) With JP leading from the front and Emily and I manoeuvring and trying to take as much weight as we could from the back. Dream team, honestly!

Then we applied our tactics to the two seater followed by the three seater. The two seater proved tricky and there was a lot of shoving and a few panics about squashed toes, thumbs and potential dinks to the wood work avoided. That meant we had a quick pow wow to avoid any such drama’s again with the three seater and that went up like a dream.... well a very heavy & exhausting dream. We were all roasting by the end, not helped by our protective gloves, face masks and plastic foot coverings.

We put the finishing touches to the rooms, arranging the furniture to mimic the previous layouts and then went back on to the drive and called Mrs A to let her have a look around and check she was happy. After a quick move for the armchair we were done. As we congratulated ourselves on the drive way Mrs A thanked us through a crack in the front door before donning her rubber gloves to wipe it down.

That left only to congratulate JP on a very satisfying and successful 100th good deed! At arms length, I handed him a card from all of us at Richmond GG and assured him that we’ll celebrate with a beer as soon as we possibly can. Well done, we’re all very proud of you 👏