If you’re a Friends afficionado, you’ll remember the episode when Ross moved and had issues getting his sofa into the new apartment. Welcome to our sofa bed saga.
When OH and I started thinking properly about buying a house, the remit was for three bedrooms. Although there’s only two of us, the business pretty much takes up an entire room with stock, and we also wanted somewhere to have people stay without them needing to trip over bags and boxes.
Now we’ve ended up with 4 bedrooms which has worked out perfectly – the littlest bedroom is turning into our home office, whilst the remaining two are both equal sized and we’ll turn one into a proper guest room and the other into a general purpose room (stock, laundry, sewing, OH’s music room – ha!)
We wanted to make this room multi-purpose and as I spend a lot of time in there and it overlooks the garden, we thought it made sense to get a sofa bed so it would be an extra bedroom if we needed it but also a comfortable place to work.
Walking down Bromley high street one summer day I came across Multiyork, who specialise in sofas and other interiors. I popped in and looked at a great collection of sofa beds, settling on the Liberty Sofa Bed which was fairly small and a great saving in the summer sale.
Taking OH back for a second opinion, we made our choice and the sofa bed was purchased. Several things appealed to me about using Multiyork – their factory is right here in the UK and I’m always keen to support UK manufacturing wherever possible, plus you have many customisable options such as the fabric you use on the sofa bed, the feet, even the type of mattress. We went for a pocket sprung mattress and a duck egg blue colour, on soft but durable fabric.
Around 6 weeks later, the sofa bed was made and ready for delivery. I worked from home, waiting for delivery.
I must say that their service was impeccable all the way through, including the two delivery men. Just one quite significant problem – the sofa bed did not fit up the stairs. They tried, they wriggled, they angled, angled, ANGLED. PIVOTTT!!
It simply Would. Not. Fit
With dismay on my face, I watched them load the sofa bed back on to the lorry to take it away to the factory, with the ball entirely in my court about what to do. I felt flummoxed. The issue we have is that because the previous owners did many improper things to the house, including a loft conversion (which is lovely) that didn’t leave enough ceiling height between the main set of stairs and the secondary one.
The next day I called Multiyork to seek their advice. Because we’d had it custom made, cancelling the order pretty much incurs about 50% of the cost so that really wasn’t an option. The lady I spoke to suggested arranging another delivery from the Multiyork specialists themselves, and that they would take the bed mechanism out thereby making it lighter and easier to manoeuvre. Back it went into the delivery schedule for another 4 weeks later.
This time, OH took a day off work to stay at home and wait for delivery. And here things fell apart. The two guys who came back were not from Multiyork, they hadn’t taken the bed out and took one look at the staircase and said “nope, it won’t fit, you need to take the bannisters off”.
I called Multiyork, wanting an explanation as to why nothing I’d been told would happen, had happened. Confusion reigned. They were fairly unapologetic, and advised that our best bet was to remove the bannisters.
Reluctantly, OH and I conceded that this was our only choice if we were to ever get the damn thing in. Fortunately, our lovely neighbour happens to be a kitchen fitter/carpenter and very kindly and carefully sawed the newel post and bannister off, removing all the spindles. I felt like crying – they’ve been there for nearly 100 years and although I know they’ll look fine when it all goes back up, deep down I know something’s been changed. I’m a bit weird like that – houses have soul.
Finally, finally the day of the third attempted delivery arrived and OH worked from home. I think he knew that I wouldn’t be able to cope if it wouldn’t fit despite damaging the structure of the house. Joyously, it was delivered without any problem at all and the delivery guys put it carefully in place and took away all the packaging.
This story does, after all, have a happy ending. The sofa bed is beautiful, it looks great and fits perfectly. OH says he’ll never see me any more because I’m so comfy up there. The quality is incredible and the bed is amazingly comfy. We haven’t yet repaired the staircase as we’re busy stripping paint off it but for now, this chapter is thankfully closed.
Click here to visit our webshop, DaisychainBaby.co.uk
No gain without pain 🙂 Looks lovely, really nice shade – how’s your pup doing? We’ve got a 14 week old Springer girl called Islay – mad as a box of frogs! Aileen x