Boz and Gracie lounging al fresco among the carnage
I must have been drugged or under the control of space aliens to have allowed one particular oversized sofa a resting place in my home. Secured at our island thrift shop Granny’s Attic, the sofa was as comfortable as it was ugly, an olive drab mastodon that some happy family on the island was cart wheeling over to have unloaded. My supposition is they lived closer to Granny’s Attic than the dump.
On the plus side, it could support one man, two dogs, a smattering of newspapers and magazines, and the occasional brave guest unfazed by dog hair and dust. (I must be good company.) With a little creative draping of a Hudson Bay blanket here, a Pendleton duvet there, the sofa’s makeover was complete. It’s 80’s faux Bauhaus roots hidden; it’s barge-like silhouette not.
Yep, Tom’s “media” room was open for business. The run was short. Unfortunately Boz and Gracie preferred the sofa’s ultra suede undercarriage to my stylish wool cloaking devices, quickly laying claim to it as their favorite all-day sleeping casbah.
Cushions on the porch? Gracie begins to suspect something is up.
Four years (and a myriad of sofa covers) later, I’ve resorted to equipping the room’s light fixtures with 15 watt bulbs so I don’t have to look at the thing. There’s likely enough popcorn in the cushions to satisfy a double feature. The fabric now resembles Jackson Pollock’s early work and in the words of my friend John, B&G really see the sofa as their napkin. So today when I spied a handsome slip-covered sofa at my friend Alexis’ garage sale, I knew the green suede monster would soon be slain and removed from its second floor lair.
May I just say when you reach 50 that your labor pool of heavy lifters is pretty shallow. It didn’t help that the sofa was accessed by a stairway wide enough to suit bean poles and minarets. A friend’s back is too important to abuse, so I halted the ill-fated exercise after a couple of telling grimaces (on both their faces and mine). With the sofa wedged on the upstairs landing, my friend Tamara said, “Too bad you just can’t cut it into pieces and throw it out the window.” (Smart girl.) Once they left, I made a beeline for my reciprocating saw. (I wanted no witnesses for this episode of Tom’s Home Remedies.)
Boz ponders, “What does this all mean?”
Fresh from a quick run to the hardware store for premium sawsall blades, I attacked that thing like a Thanksgiving turkey. I’d considered hurling each piece out of the upstairs window for dramatic effect and quick gratification, but I find the satisfaction of such gestures is short lived when the end (and inevitable) result is harm to me and damage to my house.
After learning that coiled box springs can’t be cut without reverberation that removes the arm from the socket, I rethought my dissection from halvsies to lengthwise at the seatback seam—a very wise choice in avoiding steel springs and chipped teeth. Boz and Gracie were downstairs unwittingly enjoying their last wallow on the sofa’s cushions.
When it was all said and done, the outdated, clumsy carcass littered my drive, frayed fabric and foam core innards exposed and destined for the dump. B&G held a vigil circling the beast like a fallen friend. Several passes later their march ended in favor of comfort. While still respectfully mournful, my two beasts sprawled in repose atop the cushions like Roman nobility awaiting peeled grapes. Real closure came the next day when the new sofa was christened with a couple Milk Bones and a few poorly aimed popcorn kernels. All is well again with this set of couch potatoes.
What I was blogging about a year ago: Summertime, and the Hammock is Ready
