A Couch Tale

My brother is heading back to college in 2 weeks and is living in an off-campus apartment this year. Being that he was living the dorm life last year, he was in need of some things to fill up his snazzy new apartment.

He has three other roommates. They each will have their own bedrooms and bathrooms, and will share a living and dining area as well as a kitchen. Between the four of them, they divvied up what each person needed to bring and buy for their shared space.

My brother, Chris, was in charge of bringing kitchen supplies (think plates, coffee maker, utensils...), a couch, and some bar stools.

Needing to also move in all of his bedroom and bathroom stuff, a road trip down to North Carolina (where his school is) was called for.

We decided to make a mini-vacation of it, spending a few days down there.
We piled a bulk of his things into the car, along with our luggage. It was like a jigsaw puzzle trying to fit everything in. There was hardly enough room for our bodies by the end of it.

Though a bit squished, we safely road-tripped it down to the "First in Flight" state and unpacked his things.
*Side note: I know this may sound crazy, but I LOVE road trips. Something funny/crazy/strange always seems to happen on them.

After a day's rest from all of our unpacking and apartment cleaning / setting-up,
it was then time to pay a trip to the land of Swedish furniture - IKEA. The nearest one being about an hour and a half drive away (the only one in NC!)

On our list of to dos: buy a couch and a desk chair.

What we actually ended up getting: a couch, 2 lounge chairs for the living room, a desk chair, some more glasses for the kitchen, a clock, oven mitts, and some other minor kitchen gadgets.

Now, if you're familiar with IKEA, you know that you choose the furniture you wish to purchase and then you have to pick it up down in the warehouse. The furniture is often in piece parts for which you then put together yourself.

Because of this, we couldn't exactly plan for how big of boxes we would get - or rather how much room everything would take up.

Whatever thoughts we had, however... were severely underestimated.
The couch alone couldn't fit into our Acura SUV (even with the back seat down).

And so, we got "creative."

 Everything except for the couch fit in the trunk. So onto the roof the couch went.
A bit of rope looped here, a bit of rope tied down there, and we were golden.

Or so we thought...

After about 20 minutes into our drive back to his school, we looked up through the sunroof to check on the couch. It had shifted -- and quite a bit too.
We pulled over, did a little fix, grabbed lunch, and then got back on the road. This time, I took the backseat, offering to "watch" through the sunroof.

Fifteen or so minutes into our drive - I was looking out the window on the highway and noticed a black sky ahead and to the right.

About 5 minutes later - we were in a downpour.

Now, long story short - the poorly packaged and exposed suede couch on the roof was now not only shifting slightly with every mile driven, but was also getting wet. With nowhere to really pull over for "shelter," we shimmied the couch back to a neutral position by means of opening the sunroof and pulling on the ropes.

And although this worked, the wind and general movement of the car kept shifting it around.
Unsure of what to do, Mom and Chris decided to just hold it down and in place by keeping the sunroof open and holding onto the ropes.

Did I mention it was pouring? Raindrops were being pelted towards me in the back seat, and falling onto their arms and seats.

Oh and did I mention we still had a good hour's drive to go?

We thought our current couch situation was bad... but nope, not bad enough.
Because of the way we roped the couch onto the roof, we had rope going down the front of the car (down the windshield). And since it was raining, the wipers were going.
I bet you can guess what happened next...
The wipers caught on the rope and pulled. And the rope's resistance snapped the wiper, leaving the driver's side of the car wiper-less.

We rode like that - open sunroof, rain pouring in, holding ropes down, broken wiper NOT wiping, Mom looking out the passenger side of the windshield for the rest of the time.

As pathetic and awful as it was, we were hysterically laughing at the misfortune of it all.

I told you funny/crazy/strange things happen on road trips!

We made it back to the apartment safe and sound. And surprisingly the couch was only slightly damp in one small area.

We unpacked all of the purchases and went inside to put it all together.
And I have to say, everything turned out really well and was super easy to "build." The couch and chairs are really comfy too!

Exhausted from a long and eventful day; we treated ourselves to dinner and laughed about the last few hours. It's definitely one of those stories we'll never forget.

 

I'm going to miss him while he's at school! 

Maybe I'll go visit him and crash on his couch ;)

xo Belle