Operation Flying Couches
Saturday, November 10th, 2007 by some dude
Last Sunday we put couches through our upstairs window. We had to because they wouldn’t fit up the stairs. We tried. Turn them sideways. Take the legs off. Take down the banister. The stairs are just too narrow.
Really? There’s such thing as a house that won’t fit a couch? Yes, there is such a thing.
Why do the couches have to go up the stairs when they’re perfectly fine in the living room? Because we’ve had new ones picked out for the living room, and the old comfy-but-it’s-ok-if-they-get-a-little-ratty-cuz-they-got-beat-up-in-the-move ones were supposed to go upstairs where the new big TV is. But most importantly, because I’m stubborn and wanted to prove that we could get couches upstairs through the window.
Half the neighborhood (well at least five passers-by), attracted by the two 16ft ladders we rented for the occasion, came into the house to convince us that we could get couches up the stairs. Dude, if they would go up the stairs, we would have done it three months ago when we moved in. You think we’re risking our friends’ lives climbing giant ladders before we tried that? But thanks for the concern.
Plan A—a boom lift—costs a good $500, so we went with Plan B: two really big step ladders. Just push the couches up the side of the ladders, prop the top end onto the porch’s roof, and slide them into the window where someone will catch it. Awesome plan.
So we opened the ladders up for the first time. Wow, 16 ft step ladders are way bigger than I thought. Uh…Plan B might not work so well with the 2 yard gap between the top of the ladders and the roof.
If you’ve taken Error Prevention Training, remember when they tell you about saying “This is stupid,” and stopping the operation? Well, this is about when “this is stupid” kicked in. Laura and I said it out loud even. But give up? You’re talking to one of two people that believed we could get all our crap into only two ReloCubes. Did I mention I’m stubborn?
Plan C: Turn the ladders sideways next to each other right up against the house. Result: Again, way too big a footprint—can’t even fit them in front of the house.
Plan D: Stagger them. Result: The front yard is a hill; the second ladder barely keeps from tipping over.
This is stupid.
Plan E: Close one ladder and prop it against the house like an extension ladder. Slide the couches up this one while someone on the open ladder guides it. Laura’s suggestion. We were trying to avoid crushing the gutters, but it was the only option left. Sorry gutter.
Here are the results. We make it look incredibly easy, but really it was incredibly scary. Four people on or under ladders pushing a couch up to the second floor, with four people in the window blindly tugging on ropes attached to the couches … what could possibly go wrong??? Oh yeah, Dan almost getting his head lopped off when the first couch goes tumbling off to the side. Unfortunately we didn’t get a video of that, but here’s a video of the second one. And some pictures.
Thanks to everyone that came to help, even though you all told me afterward that you really just came to be entertained by a failed attempt and didn’t believe for a second that we’d actually get the couches upstairs. As with every other stupid thing we do with friends, we couldn’t have done it without you … and this probably the stupidest thing we’ve done.
Oh and thanks to Strongo who was kind enough to come over Saturday night to show me how to take out the window (i.e. take the window out for us). I would have figured it out, but it would have taken me 6 hours and I would have broken something important.
