Sunday, May 29, 2011

Living Room Demolition Derby

My living room is a demolition center right now. I'm getting rid of the craigslist couch.

I cannot afford the hefty haul off fee charged by the local garbage company.

This leaves me only with the demolition option. I've dismantled many couches in my day. I can take apart a couch now in a couple of hours.

This one was particularly easy.


Sure, be nice to know someone with a burn pile for the wood frame. There is very little wood in a couch. Couches are made mostly of foam, two or three types, cardboard and cloth. The wood involved is stapled together to form a cheap frame. There is clothes hanger thick wire along the back and top. That's it.

If you spill something on a couch, you will never get it out. It will sink into the cardboard and the foam and be there forever. That's why if you have cats and get a used couch you will have problems. The old smells from the home before are there for good.This sheet of foam I will re use for something.This is the foam atop the arm rest.

I have another I need to dispose of, one I got off the neighbors who moved. It had been in their pack rat stuffed moist garage forever and smelled like it. I should have turned it down. I didn't.

I'll use the foam from the old couch, that I can wash in the feral cat houses still in my driveway from that business.

One of those three is likely ruined. They were not painted on the bottom and made of OSB, which soaks up moisture like a sponge. It's been pouring here for days. That one is likely toast. I will put one, when finished in my yard and the neighbor wants one, so that takes care of those. The other one, the one I didn't get painted before all the rain we've had, will have to be disposed of.

I don't mind demolition. It's cathartic! I've been house bound due to being completely broke and that can drive even a soul used to complete isolation, as I am, batty. Or, battier than usual.

Tearing a couch to its part allows for re-use or recycling of most of the old couch. It's kind of a yukky job but goes very quickly. My tools this time were a pocket knife, to cut the cloth, which was the most time consuming part of the job; a screwdriver, to remove the 8 screws holding in the bottom metal and to pry much of the rest of the couch apart. I also used a small pry bar and a hammer. That was it. Mostly the screwdriver, for prying, and the pocket knife, for cutting away the cloth.

The calls have been coming in, as often is the case, as cats begin having kittens and people don't want them.

Those people with issues, for whom I trapped many cats, before she began sabotaging my efforts to catch the last few, called me. One of the kittens from last fall had kittens and she didn't know what to do with them, since the teen mom didn't seem to want them. I know I didn't please her with my answer because she became very mean sounding and hung up on me. I do not know how to deal with her. Nothing pleases her I do or say.

Someone from way out, Stayton or somewhere, called and I could not figure out for the life of me what she wanted of me. She'd found kittens of a mother cat. All died but one. Her daughter, a vet tech, took in that one. I think she wanted me to trap and remove the mother cat but she never said that. She refused to feed her, said she couldn't get near her, at which point I repeated she could be live trapped to be fixed. They had a live trap! But she wanted her released "into the wild" after she was fixed, like "they do".

I said "Hell no, I won't do that. That's cruel. Why can't you feed the poor cat?" She wanted to chat but I repeatedly told her if she would not feed the cat, there was nothing I could do for her. I finally told her to call me back if changed her mind and decided to feed the cat and I hung up.

Then someone called and wanted me to take her cats. I said I couldn't do that and why and suggested she repeatedly try Safehaven, as they have far more resources and community support than I do, that I have nothing, actually. She countered that she had a medical reason to give them up. I apologized for being unable to help her, but told her again I have too many here now to find homes for and no real income and would be unable to take them.

So that's been my day so far: demolition and cat calls!Honey says goodbye to the last pile of debris that once was the craigslist brown couch.Above is my living room minus this old stinky awful couch and good riddance!New look dining room, cleaner and less busy.
New look to dining room area where there used to be two tables but now one is moved to the living room.
Here is the new look to the living room. I had two tables just off the kitchen and so I moved one over to where the couch used to be and put the sick cage on it there. I would take apart the sick cage but Dex loves being in it, with the heating pad on low, up on the upper shelf. Over where it used to be I put the night table that used to be beside the red couch.


I have three piles of material outside. The metal material will be recycled. The wood I hope to give away, to someone who wants it. Some of the cloth is in my compost pile. Most of the foam, after I wash it thoroughly, will be re-used also.

Also, my kitchen mini blinds fell down and were really terrible. That happened months ago. I don't like to feel shut in, so I never replaced them. But now the sun glares in, when it shines that is, so I have T-shirt curtains.



Also, on Household Hacker, one of my favorite youtube sites, there is the following video on how to dissolve plastic packing peanuts in acetone (nail polish remover) to form a goo that you can put into a mold, to re-harden. I don't know if the foam from the couch would dissolve in acetone, but the video is fabulous as are most on this site. I might try it, in my quest to create molds and make my own shoes!

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