Stair-ing like a trooper

This evening I met with Jatin for a furniture moving mission in Hackney.

We were scheduled to help Mrs J, who is currently waiting to be released home from hospital. Before she's released, some space needs to be made in her living room for a hospital bed to be installed. GoodGym were asked if we could help effect this.

The instructions Jatin and I received in advance of today's mission were very broad. They were, to paraphrase, "meet Mrs J's son, M, and he'll show you what furniture to move". The underlying subtext to such broad instructions is "there's a lot of things to be moved/it sounds very complicated". Despite this, Jatin and I were game to give the mysterious furniture move a go.

After introducing ourselves to M and some of the rest of Mrs J's family, we got started.

M's plan wasn't complicated, but there was a lot of furniture to be moved. His plan was to remove a foldable bed from an upper floor bedroom to a communal bin area, and to fill the newly emptied room with boxes, smaller furniture items and a dismantled dining room table. These latter items were initially located in the downstairs living room, so moving them upstairs would free up space in the living room for the hospital bed.

It took just two shakes of a lamb's tail for Jatin and I to remove the folded bed to the communal bins, leaving a largish space upstairs.

First to refill the room were a couple of large boxes. For this part, I simply watched M and Jatin negotiate the boxes up the stairs. They often used their heads to very literally provide extra support to a lower side of each box (also known as thinking outside the box), and I was a little disappointed to not have any popcorn to enjoy the spectacle.

Next came the breakable-looking furniture, which of course came partly under my remit. Luckily, I've broken/seen enough breakable-looking furniture break in transit before to remember to get Jatin to check whether or not any of the glass pieces on a coffee table were easily removable before we moved it (they were), and to suggest taping up some glass doors on a display cabinet to prevent them from sliding open when we hit the incline. I'm happy to report that at least some of this worked, and there were definitely no breakages of the breakable-looking furniture 😎👍🏻 Phew!

The last major item to be moved was a dining table. After dismantling the legs and a central pillar from the base of the table, Jatin and M took the table leaf upstairs while I took the rest of it. Again, no breakages (at least by us 😅), so we just felt smugly proud for a few seconds before finishing our staircase treks by carrying some light dining chairs and a stereo system upstairs.

With the major work done for the night, we made our goodbyes to M and to the rest of Mrs J's family, taking an old stereo with us to deposit by the bins as we left.

Hopefully all this movement means that a large enough space has been created for Mrs J to be released home later this week. Her family are looking forward to having her home! 😄

It was great working with you, Jatin: thanks for all the heavy lifting! 😄