My mom had a couch that was bought new circa 1970. She was very fond of it, had it in the first apartment she lived in with my dad. It seemed to symbolize, for her, her independence (first grown-up furniture she bought after leaving her parents' house) plus her romance with my father. (I think they slept on its fold-out bed in their first apartment). She was VERY fond of it.
It was the ugliest couch every made by humans.
It was also the heaviest couch ever made by humans.
It was colored in virulent, loud, hideous oranges and greens and yellows and browns (all at once). And it contained the heaviest metal apparatus for a fold-out bed that I have ever seen. Also, sleeping on the fold-out bed would break your back because of the metal bars.
Well, my parents moved with this couch a couple times. By then my mother had decided she hated the upholstery, but she still liked the couch itself. So when she was pregnant with my brother, she bought lovely new upholstery for it--pastel blue and lavender and rose.
She reupholstered half of the couch before she got too busy to finish the project. So, when my brother and I were children, this couch was half bright-orange-green-yellow and half pale-lavender-rose.
It was disgusting. It was also the only couch in the little house where my brother and I were small children in the 1980s, and was the centerpiece of our home. When we had visitors, my mom would be embarrassed by the half-upholstered monstrosity and would throw a (always ugly) blanket over the whole couch.
By the time I was in high school, my parents still refused to buy a new couch because this couch was "still good." I waged a campaign to get my mom to at least FINISH REUPHOLSTERING IT or my brother and I were going to drag it to the curb. (And the rest of the unused pastel upholstery always took up room in the closet for my whole childhood, by the way).
She finally finished reupholstering it the year before I left for college (when my brother was 15). Now it looked pretty, but by then it was so worn it was uncomfortable to sit on. (Also, half of its "new" upholstery was more faded then the other half, of course!)
The next year, my mom bought a new living room set, and my brother and I helped her (with extreme difficulty, because it was SO HEAVY) move the old couch into the newly-completed guest bedroom, where it would serve as the bed when we had guests.
Over the next few years, numerous relatives and my college boyfriend complained that it was the worst sofa-bed they had ever slept on. Still, my mother would not get rid of it, because she was so attached to the new upholstery (which had taken her 15 years to finish, after all!)
My mom only agreed to get rid of the couch many years later, after my brother got married and his wife threatened to never visit again if they had to sleep on that death trap of a sofa bed.
By then, the couch seemed strangely to have increased in mass, and it was so heavy none of us could get it out. We finally hired some junk removers who hacked it to pieces with a chainsaw and chucked the pieces out the window and carted them away to the dump.
That was in 2012. My mother hasn't missed the couch since then.
BUT the best part of this story is that we photo-documented the whole thing. We had numerous pictures of the couch over the years, mostly from people sitting on it at holidays: the couch in its original ugly print, in its mismatched half-upholstered ridiculousness [for 15 years], hidden under a blanket for company, and my mother's proud pictures of its finally finished "new" upholstery.
AND we deliberately photo-documented the final demise of the Ugliest Couch Ever, as it was hacked apart by chainsaws, the old orange upholstery emerging again as fell it pieces, and the pieces being hurled out the window.
The pictures are hilarious, and that couch is some of the best memories I have of my childhood.
So, I totally get it about your wife's couch. Take pictures. Remember it fondly. Say good-bye.
Good luck!
I thought that was a dog thing, but alas, in my house, it is a cat thing.
