In the Crate ; Hancock and Moore

While many upholstery makers try to scrimp on packing and simply bubble wrap their furniture, then stick it on the truck and pray, H&M sets the industry standard for the most extensive packing/crating of any maker that I know of. In a way, its a bit of a pain to have to get these out of the box, but they only use one packing method and its designed for export shipping, so its substantial.

I thought everyone here would like to see how a typical sofa arrives. So here's a photo of what it looks like when I get it. There's an art to unpacking one of these, and it took me several months to figure out the right way to do it. Should you ever get an H&M sofa shipped to you via truck line (instead of in-home delivery service) here's how you unpack one.

Tools needed:

1) A box cutter
2) A cordless drill/driver with a # 2 Square bit ( # 2 Phillips can work, but not as well as they tend to strip out the screw heads)

Steps to unpack:

A) Flip the box upside down before you cut anything so the base is exposed as seen in the photo.

B) Cut horizontally all around the sofa interior frame with the box cutter, app. 1 or 2" below the wood.

C) Cut vertically top to bottom on all four corners. As you do this, the weight of the sofa will ease down so the top of the sofa is resting on the inside of the box.

D) When the sofa is fully down, splay out the four sides of the carton onto the ground which will be easy to do as they are already cut.

E) Remove appx. (12 to 16) Wood Screws from the frame that is screwed into the bottom of the sofa. Be careful on the last one, as the weight of the wood frame will want to move the wood crate base as you remove the last screw. If you don't halt that movement, the last screw can drag across the leather and damage the sofa.

F) Remove framework and set aside (I use a portable Sawzall to cut it up and dispose in the trash)

G) Now the sofa is ready to be flipped over, and the exterior protective cover removed! Take all loose cushions off the piece to unweight the sofa for moving. NEVER roll sofa onto its leather covering unless there is proper padding and protection on the ground.

That's it! As you can imagine, its not something you want to do in the rain......