The Demolition of the Couch

[errantember]

We've all had them at one time or another. The Couch. *That* Couch. The Dog Couch. The Crash Couch. And, in the lives of all such couches, a time arrives when patience is at an end, and the inconvenience of continued ownership finally overwhelms the momentum of complacency.

So there I was.

But, I decided, I wasn't going to just stick the fucker out on the curb and wait for the next big pickup. We have enough crap in our landfills already, and although I've made great progress in limiting my Mountain of Garbage contribution in daily life, I'm still just as guilty as anyone else of letting the Big Items head off to ecological oblivion.

This time, I decided, it would be different.

So I got out hammers and crowbars, pliers and vice-grips, and started prying.

It's been more interesting than I'd thought, and far more instructive. As surprising as what they Got Wrong from a Cradle to Cradle perspective is what they got right. The couch is made out of a variety of off-cut and leftover materials that couldn't have been used somewhere else. Oak, pine, plywood, and a few I can't identify are used in different places where their varying strengths and expenses are appropriate. They're too ugly to use exposed, but hidden under fabric they work. Most of the stuffing for the back is recycled ripped-up foam rubber. So there's a *lot* going on here that moving in the right direction.

There are still problems, though, like how hard it is to take apart. If you want try to salvage and re-use as much of the wood as possible, it's a painstaking, hours-long process of carefully prying, banging, and wigging the parts apart, all the while dodging razor sharp metal connectors it's not even *remotely* possible to completely remove. Most of the structural connections are made by sometimes as many as ten really long, sharp staples. These are dangerous, haphazardly applied, and nearly impossible to remove. Re-using the wood they're in would require sawing off the sharp bits and taking your chances with what's left in the weakened wood. It wouldn't take much extra planning and training to put it together in a way that was just as strong and cheap to build, but would be far easier to disassemble and re-purpose. Considering how high the margins must be on furniture, even a little extra expense would be easy to justify. There is cardboard inside that I'll be recycling. The fabric will probably go to a landfill, which would be ok if it weren't synthetic, and likely to last for hundreds of years. Using a renewable material with a known lifespan would be a better choice, as would designing the couch so it's easy to remove and re-apply. As it stands, the fabric is incestuously mated to every inner joint inside, and there's no way to take it off without totally destroying the couch. Again, this is bad design and could be avoided with a little thought.

The couch is almost two-dimensional now, after what's probably been 4 hours of work. It's probably too cost-prohibitive for even experts trained in re-purposing to make a profit doing this kind of work, but with a few changes, that wouldn't be true. I'm going to re-use about 70% of the wood in my woodshop for little projects like shoji screens and shoe boxes.

Every time I do something like this I learn a little more about what it will take to make our lives more sustainable, re-usable, and fun. I'm grateful to the couch for it's lessons, and will also be relieved when it's faded placidly into another existence.

Comments

[troyisburning.livejournal.com]

I found that tossing a couch on a large fire seems to reduce it to its component parts pretty quickly. No struggle required! :)

[serenity-rose7.livejournal.com]

I am in awe of your multi-layers of creativity!

[gailmom.livejournal.com]

Can I just mention how completely cool it is that you took apart the couch to get out the re-usable parts?

You're making me feel like an environmental asshole (images in my head of that pile of old fencing that went to the dump), but it's still very cool. :P