Settling in and unpacking was a longer process than either one of us realized. Not having the kitchen cabinets fully done and installed caused a lot of stress for me. Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy and I are very different in that I can do one project at a time, start to finish, whereas she likes to juggle multiple projects at the same time and isn’t bothered by unfinished work.
As we started to settle in and have a semi-functional, cabinet-less house, we wanted to get back to our routines a little more and ended up going on a Costco run. We were planning on just stocking up on the essentials to get us through the next week or so as we were leaving for Colorado shortly after. My sister was getting married, and Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy’s medical school friends were having a reunion—it would be the first time we’d all get together since our wedding. The stress of the Colorado trip and the move really compounded—we even toyed with the idea of having me fly back early and skip out on the reunion to try to get us a little more settled.
During our Costco haul we walked by the sofa that would have taken up our entire living space and had thoughts of what could have been. Tucked away in the corner was another coffee color leather sofa, it reclined, and was much more reasonably sized for our space, sitting three people vs the eight we were originally considering.
Sitting on the sofa was a kid playing video games, but that didn’t stop us from plopping down next to him.
“Ooh this is nice.”
Mrs hits the recliner button…
“This is real nice.”
Perhaps it’s because we had been sofaless and sitting on the tile floor for over a month now, or perhaps this sofa was really that comfortable. But it was really love at first sight and sit.
We took one look at the price tag and were sold. This leather sofa was a fraction of the price of other retailers online. We checked to see if we could purchase the sofa on the Costco website as neither of us drive a truck (#EcoLesbians). Unfortunately the sofa was all sold out online. We finished our shopping trip and asked a Costco worker how people purchase and transport large furniture from the warehouse to their home.
“Oh, most just rent a U-Haul truck.”
We went back to our newfound love, sat on the sofa again, this time next to an older woman writing a politically charged Facebook post and looked up U-Haul locations and prices.
Our best bet was heading back home, dropping off our groceries, and renting a U-Haul from there. While there was a U-Haul just down the street from Costco, the pricing was significantly more…perhaps for this exact reason.
Learning our lesson from the first time, we checked the dimensions of the box and sofa. The sofa would be too long to fit in the bed of a truck, we needed a Cargo Van. We dropped off our stuff, headed to U-Haul and did what every lesbian dreams of doing—we rented that thing.
Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy felt more comfortable driving. One gender and race roll that is probably a shock to many, but she did an excellent job. She dropped me off and I ran into Costco to purchase the sofa while she parked herself in the back of the lot taking up approximately 4 spaces.
The Costco guys loaded it up onto the flatbed cart and helped us load it into the van and we were off! I snapped a few pictures to photo-document our “We don’t need no man” themed move.
Once we got home, I pulled the hand truck over from the garage, thinking this would help us transport the sofa. I think I really overestimated the size and ability of the hand truck, and I am also still not sure if I fully know how to use this thing. I had just watched our moving company use hand trucks so seamlessly for absolutely everything…but we haven’t found one use for it, unfortunately.
From the cargo van to the ground was approximately 3 feet. I am waiting outside the van, hand truck nearby while Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy is trying to push the sofa out of the van. It wasn’t budging.
Silly us, we should unpack the contents of the box and take the sofa in piece by piece. So that’s what we did. We unpacked the three head pieces and trotted them to the garage, no issues there. This was going to be so easy now! We were feeling confident that the base would be much lighter to move without the headpieces… we were indeed, very wrong about this.
The base was so heavy. Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy managed to push the base out about 1/3 of the way.
“Keep going! I got it!”
She knew I didn’t have it but mostly didn’t want to damage the new sofa we just bought.
Our neighbor peaked his head out, “Hey, do you all need help?”
At the same time I said “No, we are good!” And Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy said “Yeah, we could use some help please!!”
He and his wife had just moved here from Texas, and they have been in the process of unpacking and settling in at the same time.
He came over, helped us lift the softa onto the hand truck, very crookedly. We thanked him and for him it was all in a day’s work of being a man. We tried to push the sofa using the hand truck. I’d pick up the end hanging off the hand truck and Dr Greys Anatomy would push… no luck.
We finally said “screw it” now that the sofa is down from the van we can just carry it in. This again, wasn’t as easy as either one of us imagined. It was the heat of the day, over 100 degrees outside, the sun is beating down on us and we make it 6 inches, 10 if we are lucky before having to set the sofa down.
“Maybe we should just ask our neighbor if he can help us get it into the house?” Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy said.
“No babe, we got this. We don’t need no man anymore!”
Quite some time later, we got the sofa into the house, we put on the pad feet and slid the sofa across our tile floors into place. At this point, we had 5 minutes until it was time to return our U-Haul. We hopped in the cargo van, dropped off the keys and headed back to snap in the headpieces. For the record, I did get a little sunburn from the duration I spent outside waiting to “catch” the sofa and move it from our driveway into the house.
The sofa was fairly easy to put together because it was literally just the 4 pieces. We plugged it in, sat down, and reclined.
Within 2 minutes Dr Greys Anatomy was passed out with Boba and Bernie right next to her, thanking us for finally getting them a sofa.
