On Tuesday evening, Lionel and I took on the task of moving a sofa for Mrs C. Mrs C has been in hospital for the last 5 weeks and the team there are planning to get her home. Mrs C’s lovely daughter R had cleared out her bedroom to make space for her new hospital bed, however because of the small steps leading to her room it was deemed unsuitable. Therefore Mrs C would have to have her bed in the living room. No problem. If not for the great big settee in the way...

I’ve moved many a piece of furniture with GoodGym, and Lionel already had a rep of being a bit handy, so between us, this task should have been easy (peasy lemon squeezy, with sugar please). However this suite was not so quite so sweet.

R informed us that this was quite a special sofa, and had been designed by Elle McPherson. In fact this sofa had so much body, that the door frames leading into the flat had to be removed to get the thing in in the first place! There was no way we were going to get this out in one piece.

Lionel took charge, and decided we would need to take the fabric off. A few sharp moves of the safety blade, and the creamy cover was ripped away. Lionel decided the plan would be to try and take the sofa apart by removing the metal work and springy bits. I agreed wholeheartedly, stroking Mrs C’s dog and letting him get in with it!

So Lionel got to work, prodding and pulling the metal wires and catches. I was made redundant from the task and thus made friends with the chubby little pug. Lionel had this under control as I got a good sniffing from the dog.

Sofa so good, some might say! The next job was to try and break through the wooden frame. This was a harder task that anticipated, as it was very well built, and no amount of GoodGym kicking or jumping would break this sturdy chair. It was saw time! Lionel managed to saw through three blocks of wood in the time I managed one. And were we any closer to breaking the sofa up?

The answer was no. Instead there were some more metal brackets that needed to come off, and the screws out of place. Stop. It was Hammer time! We managed to prise all the brackets off and screws out... and still the sofa would not break.

Flipping ‘eck! It took even more time to turn the sofa, cut away more fabric, pull out more metal work and saw more of the wooden frame.

It was over an hour later before the sofa finally became a three piece suite! There were celebrations all round. The beast had been tamed! The pieces of sofa were then carefully carried out down the corridor to the outside world, followed by the black bags of fabric and the piles of cushions that once adorned the sofa.

R was so very grateful for our help in moving the sofa out. There was so much more room now, which meant Mrs C’s hospital bed would be able to be delivered the next day and hopefully get her home after such a long time, and reunited with her wonderful family, and of course, her lovely pug!!

Time well spent, and the only thing now was to get home and have pancakes!