The Last of the Lot

We've got the steepest, windingest staircase ever leading up to our flat so we kind of expect people to be huffing and puffing by the time they reach our front door, and not in a blow-down-your-house kind of way. We managed to get most everything up the stairs when we moved in, but it wasn't a surprise when it turned out that our American sofa wouldn't fit, and we had to have it popped in through our window. Yup, just pop it in. Sounds easy, don't it? But it's not. Not at all. And I found out how not easy it is today when our sofa was finally delivered after living in a storage unit for the last two months.

First, the moving company had to arrange for parking with the council to make sure they had the proper parking spot. Then, they had to position a lift going up to our flat window, which is several stories up. I was so scared that the the sofa would end up not fitting through the window that I measured the windows four times and triple checked the dimensions of the sofa. How horrible would it be if the sofa went up the lift, but wouldn't fit through the window? The handyman then had to pop our windows out of their frame and hold them while three burly men hefted the sofa off the lift and into our flat. Then the handyman reassembled our windows and ran off with a promise to come back and make the window sashes look perfect again.

Cranking the lift up to our window...

Ahh! We're being attacked by giant ladders!

Suffice to say, the lift attracted some notice...

I nearly hurled just watching the handyman taking apart our centuries old window so I hid out in the bedroom during the whole thing, and J went into the office late to oversee the process since it's probably bad form to throw up on your movers. Everything turned out fine in the end, but the entire process was nerve-wracking, and I can't believe we're going to have to do it again when we move out. Gulp.