December 2nd, 2007 - Sunday
 What a great time we had last night! Steve and I, with some assistance from Mum and Dad, got to play "tetris" with
Steve's parent's "lounge" (living room) furniture. The movers finally did return last night just after 6pm, carted the
sofa pieces up the naked stairs and reassembled them at the top. In order to put the sofa where it needed to go, the
two chairs that were already there had to be pushed back to make room. This filled up half the lounge with furniture
so that you couldn't even walk through part of it. We figured we would sort that out when the movers left.
When they finally DID go, we began the process of determining where things needed to go. The sofa was slightly
larger than the two chairs that previously occupied its location, which was diagonal accross one side of the lounge...
its bulk made the lounge seem very small and cramped. Strike 1. We thought we would try pushing it back a bit and squaring
it up with the wall, but the radiator stuck out just enough that with the sofa there, the door to the lounge wouldn't open
all the way. Strike 2. We then thought if we moved it to the other wall and swapped locations with the other two arm chairs
that would work...only that meant moving two more chairs, an old side table with a record player inside, several small corner
tables, a lamp, and all the electrical cables powering things in the lounge.
By this point, Steve's dad was starting to feel "kerfuffled", which essentially means he was feeling nervous and bothered
by the whole thing and was ready to take a break for a bit. He went down to Harlee's to get some fish and chips for dinner,
leaving Steve and me and Mum in the disheveled lounge. Steve, who is very much a man of "start a project, finish a project,
just get it done", said "right, well we can't leave the loung like this, let's try moving it to the other wall. So we moved
Mum to a different chair so we could rearrange things again (she asked if we would rather she go hang herself up in the
wardrobe to keep out of our way! :) ). We pulled the chairs out and found all sorts of things behind them that Mum and Dad
had forgotten about. We dusted and vacuumed and got things looking pretty clean and spiffy.
After taking a break for dinner, we all went back upstairs and began trying to put the lounge back into a useable form.
Steve and Dad moved the sofa back against the wall, and it fit perfectly! We even had enough room to actually use the coffee
table they had upstairs for years but had to keep to the side and out of the way. We moved the armchairs around to the side,
turned the area rug the other way, and BINGO! Suddenly everything looked perfect! The lounge now looks at least twice as big
as it did before, the chairs that Mum can't sit it because they are too low are gone, and bonus, all the furniture has been
cleaned behind. A definite "right result" as Steve would say. :)
Since we had made the lounge look so nice, but had also removed some of the storage areas (ie...behind the arm chairs)
we decided it warranted a trip to ASDA ( the UK version of WalMart ) to get some storage containers. We got some lovely
ones woven out of seagrass which accent the lounge nicely. So all in all, it was a great evening. Steve and I had a blast
moving stuff around, Mum had a blast sitting happily in her armchair watching us and directing us, and Dad...well, I think
he was pretty tired out by the whole experience, but as Steve says, "he need a little chaos in his life now and then." :)
|
