BIG problem... solved-ish!

My favorite, favorite, favorite piece of furniture is our restoration hardware leather couch that we paid an arm-and-a-leg for. In Durham, Ayumi and I hung out on it a lot. When Ayumi was out of town, I slept on it. I like it more than I like the cats. Okay, so me gusta couch.


Well, when the moving truck shows up here in New Hampshire, the mover tells us "there is no way that couch is getting through the house. Old houses from the 1800s have tiny doorways. It probably won't fit in the front door. You might just need to set it outside and sell it." Cue rush-of-blood-to-the-head. I resisted the urge to swing appendages.

So it ended up barely squeezing through the front door but could go no further. The only other room that it could fit into (the parlor) was being demo-ed (see this post). Same problem with couch number two. Therefore our big problem looked like this:

We could not use our front door and we had nothing to sit on together. Our evening consisted of sitting on separate chairs, only to bridge the gap with the entirely unsatisfactory hand-hold. At night, I dreamed about the couch. It was time for action.

I hoped that if I took off the headboard and casing and then knocked out the frame inside I could get the extra 3 1/2 inches needed to get the couch through. The living room is at the other end of the house and there were two doorways to get through. I went after doorway #1...

 and then busted up doorway #2. Here is a video of the cats helping me (Warning: lower your volume a little).

At the end of the video, my hammering  caused one of our ancient windows to slam shut. haha.

Anyways, once I was done the couches fit through (barely)!!!!!!!! Big ups to Ayumi for being able to lift that big couch with me. She strong.

The doorways looked like this:

and Ayumi looked like this:

It's amazing what a difference it makes to  (1) be able to use your front door and (2) have a comfy place to sit together. I can't believe I just wrote that but it's true. I think our quality of life went up at least four notches. Cheers for small victories. :o)

Down the road we are going to open up both of these doorways even more to make the dining room (the room in the middle) a little less closed off. Schemes galore, let me tell you. Hope you guys are doing well!