Couch carter

This evening I met up with the awesome Latoya for an evening mission for Mrs K in Hackney.

Now that she's less mobile, Mrs K is scheduled to have a hospital bed delivered on Monday so that she can live more comfortably on the ground floor. To make space for the hospital bed, a two seater leather sofa first had to be moved from her living room to her kitchen. This was the reason for our mission tonight!

As the living room and the kitchen were both on the ground floor, separated only by a hallway comprising a staircase along one side (including some infuriatingly smug-looking balustrades and a bannister), I foolishly believed that this mission would be straightforward. This was not the case. Consequently, prepare yourself for an overly detailed account of the subsequent 30 minute period of my life... 🤓

After a little bit of shuffling to get the sofa out of the room (including some minor furniture rearranging), we carted the sofa as far as the staircase before realising that a metal frame affixed to the bottom of the sofa prevented us from moving it any further (those smug balustrades). Annoyingly, this metal frame had only been added last week, and was fastened to it using two different types of screw heads 😬 (this part will become relevant later). Even more frustratingly, I'd left my fancy screwdriver in my office and Mrs K didn't think that she had one.

And so we returned the sofa back to the living room, deciding that at least standing it up in a corner of the living room would be better than nothing. Post-telling the sofa to sit, we chatted to Mrs K for a few minutes, which led us to discover that a neighbour had been looking for a screwdriver "just 8 o'clock that morning"! With this bit of valuable intel, we popped a couple of doors down and knocked... Either we looked dodgy, or nobody was in: the screwdriver remained elusive.

But wait! Latoya spotted a gentleman waving at us from outside Mrs K's! It was a lodger, and he had a screwdriver!! But only one (a flathead, for anyone who's interested). This is where the part about the two types of screw becomes more relevant. Undeterred, Latoya and I unscrewed what parts of the metal frame we could, and attempted to move the sofa back to the kitchen yet again... No joy. There are certain words I'd like to call those balustrades out loud (mentally shakes fist at them). Resigned to the inevitable, we again returned the sofa to the living room with the hope that the extra/necessary space for the bed can be made by her daughter removing some of her own furniture items over the weekend.

It was great working with you, Latoya, even if the mission wasn't successful this time (although, let's face it, we didn't break either the glass in the cabinet or the mirror in the hallway, so that feels like a win!) I love both your technique for carrying leather sofas (putting it on a foot and walking/carrying it that way), and your fancy new black t-shirt ON ITS MAIDEN OUTING!!! (I made her do a photoshoot 😎✌️) Hope your work tonight goes more smoothly than our mission did! 😊