They do make them like they used to!

Today's task in the great Watters home renovation project was the removal of our sofa that is being replaced in the mix. We needed to get it out as a new carpet is being fitted on Wednesday and today was my last daytime opportunity before then to get rid of it.

The thing is that we bought it for this house prior to moving in and therefore our imagination overestimated the room size and it has always been a bit too big for the lounge and imposes somewhat. More to the point, to get it into the lounge in the first place, there was the need to remove doors and part of the architrave so we have always determined that it goes out in pieces.

If I am honest, I feel a bit guilty because the part of the decision to replace it is that one of the cats had decided some time ago to use it as a scratching post and trashed the already tired fabric. We decided to replace it as part of the decoration of the lounge for the first time in the ten years that we have lived here but, as soon as I got the removable cover off of it, it was clearly quite clean, tidy and very sturdy. I had one hell of a job to get it into small enough bits to get it into the back of the car to go tot the tip. The thing that struck me most was the fact that we bemoan the quality of modern goods that are not built to last but it transpires that this sofa very much was built to last.

Don't get me wrong, the outer shell had seen much better days so it would have spoiled all the effort we have put into the lounge over the past few months. After all, the reason we have waited ten years is that we always realised that the decoration of our lounge needed to include the removal of the awful fire that we inherited wit h the house and, as the boiler was attached to the back of it, this also meant a significant overhaul of the central heating system, hence the delay.

So now we have a lounge with garden furniture and the sofa cushions on the floor awaiting the arrival of the new carpet and new sofa and today's blip shows our old sofa in the back of the car (minus cushions) on its way to the big lounge in the sky.