Good-bye week and hello couch

These past few weeks have been busy. This summer started off with a good-bye week. Lois and Jeff left for their internship on a Monday (April 28th), on Wednesday Britt left for Seattle, on Friday Sam left for New York and somewhere in there Steph and Andy left for California. So that was a big week for everyone.

That Thursday though Heidi and Mark moved in across the parking lot from our apartment into an upstairs apartment. It’s cool having so much family close by and its nice having Steph and Andy back from their vacation.

Just so that I wouldn’t loose my mind with boredom, Britt bought me Mario Cart (rated E for comic mischief) as a good-bye present. It’s been fun playing it but I would rather have Brittany here than a game.
Then this past week end I got kind of restless and I was looking for things to do around the house (I've been reorganizing everything to give our house a new look for when Britt gets back) and the couch has been bugging me to no end. It has pieces of wood that poke into you when you sit down and won’t sit up against the wall because of another wooden piece that is trying to break out the back. Having worked in an upholstery shop I decided to take a look at the busted insides of our couch.

I found a lot of problems. The wood that is used as a support for the back was flawed and it had cracked right in half on a knot in the wood. When that happened, all the pieces that were nailed to it and the top support came apart and those pieces that were now loose were the pieces that were poking into the fabric.

I also found that there was no left-to-right support that is supposed to be there. Normally there is twine that weaves through the springs to add that additional support. On this couch there was only a single metal wire that ran through the springs and was clipped to them. It was broken and wasn’t doing a whole lot (even if it wasent broken it wouldn’t be doing much).

The support closest to the camera is supposed to look like the one that is farther back. You can also see the broken wire and the lack of left-to-right spring support.

Here is another piece digging into the couch

Well after I took the couch apart I wanted to fix everything but realized that i was lacking the air compressor and staple gun that I am used to. I didn’t want to close it up without at least improving the situation so I decided to fix it up boy scout style! I went to a farm supply store and bought 9000 feet of twine.

I called Britt and told her about the purchase and she was very perplexed by my actions. Since she didn't know about my couch project, she kept asking me why we needed 9000 ft. of twine and I assured her that we would be using it all the time. After a little while she guessed that I was going to run twine through the springs but she didn't guess that I was going to fix the wood too.

So I got home and started lashing together the wood. Now this is a very temporary fix! So don’t think that I won’t cut corners and leave it like this forever. But it works well for the time being.

Here is the ugly lashing on the bottom support that cracked and broke everything else. It’s kind of slip-shod sine there was only a half an inch space to slip the twine through on the back and bottom but I was able to feed it through eventually. I was going to do more but I got a friction burn from feeding the twine between the wood and the foam. Foam is very abrasive!

Here is the final tie-up! I twinned the springs and lashed the loose pieces of wood back together and now I just need to put the fabric back on. So it took a while but at least I won’t get back aches every time I study on the couch!