The Unexpected Sofa.
Erm, yes. Well, it was the birthday weekend after all. For various inexplicable reasons it seems that acquiring Elton John’s sofa* seemed to be the best way to celebrate.
We long tired of our only choice of seating being either fold up camping chairs, with us folded up uncomfortably within, or on toolboxes, or as a frequent last resort the floor. Little did we know that a visit to the local (and reliably quite good actually) car boot sale would present us with the ideal opportunity to do something silly about it.
Obviously we spotted our new sofa a mile off; well, wouldn’t you?
Sat on it and politely enquired the price. Remained poker-faced and wandered off to engage in heated debate once safely out of earshot, walked as slowly as possible round rest of boot sale twice, buying other random objects before going back to discover it hadn’t been sold and make an insultingly poor offer. Fair enough, the seller didn’t bite, but instead came up with a more sensible figure, as these things go, somewhere in the middle. Deal done we grabbed one end each and marched the thing straight out of there, into the car (sort of- didn’t quite fit), out of the car, over the footbridge and into the boat, stopping on the after deck for these frankly scary pictures. Sometime about this point a passing rambler shouted “well, you just don’t expect to see THAT!” which is about right. I mean, it’s so bad it’s good really. And comfy enough to sleep on convincingly, once the bits of dead vegetation had been vacuumed out of all the crevices.
Becky has developed some mad plan to reupholster the thing and spruce up the bonkers faux Louis XIV carving, which I wholly approve of, but also figure that it can stay red crushed velvet for a bit, as for a while at least it’s only going to get covered in dust while we cut more bits of wood up all over the place.
I love it, it’s ridiculous aesthetic crashes horribly into the whole tugboat-tough thing. Also being able to lounge about in front of the fire when I should be sanding something down or wrestling electrics instead is a very gratifying thing indeed, which is a bit of a first.
*A lie.
posted by IsmilebecauseIhavenoideawhatsgoingon at 9:13 pm
10 Comments:
Awesome score. Antiques go with everything, tugs included. Yep, I keep waiting to re-upholster mine too. I think I'll be waiting a while longer.
Great job! An almost fitted "dust sheet" springs to mind? (blue plastic reinforced tarp, and gaffer tape!) so it won`t get worse!:o)) great find, eh? Amazing what a hired/borrowed steam cleaner and a pot of faux gold paint will do when your ready,and a few "throws" too, of course
Love it. :)
Nice to see an update too, I worry when it's been quiet for a while
Dear Rob,
Nice one. A suitable dust sheet has been deployed.
I'm 100% with you on the 'throws' thing as well.
cheers, S
This has made me laugh out loud to see you two lording it aboard on crushed red velour and gold galore!
MadreinFrance
Would be nice on the bridge.
As a Captains chair....?
-:D
Hi Ib.
Hmmmm, yes- I thought that too...
Hi Seb
Love the sofa, it pays to have a little luxury when you're constantly living in a building site.
Nerdy question; the little davit in the background of the photo of Becky, how much weight can that take? I've been thinking about building something similar next to our wheelhouse and have a tendency to underestimate what welded steel can handle and therefore massively overengineer things...
Hi Steve,
in order to answer your question I had to find out what a hundredweight is as the davits themselves (which are solid round bar by the way) have '8CWT running load' stamped upon them. this has been revised several times over the years as it's possible to make out the original number 12 which has been ground out. A hundredweight is 112lb. 8 x112lb is 896lb. What's this in new money?? 406.4 Kilos apparently. So just under half a ton then. All this however depends upon the strength of the bosses that I made up for these davits to run in, they are made from heavy wall pipe, some large 8mm plate fillets and welded together with low hydrogen sticks, but it's anyone's guess what load they'll take before they shear. At work we always overengineer things where lifting is concerned so I think you should take comfort that you feel the need to do the same and just go for it really. Our own davits have turned out surprisingly useful, in spite of the fact that I only put them up because I was sick of skelfing my knees on them...
Wow thanks, you learn something every day. It's always surp[rising just how much weight things can take, half a ton is a LOT of weight, and i'd probably be getting nervous hauling a couple of 25kg bags of coal up on them, which is more than a bit silly.
I think, however, that a lot less problems would arise from overengineering davits than underengineering them, so it's good to have a rough idea of what a half ton davit looks like, and then go crazy with bracing, welding and thickness of steel!
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