Suite for Corned Beef Can Opener and Cardboard Cutter

Last Sunday, we decided it was time to replace our two-piece suite in the living room. Like much else in our flat, these items of furniture were thrown in for free by the vendor, who appeared to subscribe to the widely-held local view that second-hand stuff isn't worth much, even when it's your own. Which is strange when you think about it, because at least you know where it's been.

Anyway, unlike our BiF table, which he told us had set him back HK$8,000, which appears to be indestructible – even if it's made a fair old mess of the floor – our black leather sofa and armchair were begin to fray at the seams. More particularly, the elastic under the cushion on the armchair was beginning to go, puzzlingly, as it is the place where I usually sit of an evening.

So it was off to the local IKEA for us and, as luck would have it, they had each of the items we were looking for, a 4-seater sofa (or 3.5 seater as the Swedes prefer to call it) and an armchair for 1.5 persons. Yes, they have them too which is ideal for us, as my daughter and I like to sit together when we're watching the football of a Saturday night and hurling abuse at the referee, and – if the other one's team is playing – the other one's team.

The salesman was a cut above the average Hong Kong drone, advising us, when we gave him our address that our building's lift doors were very narrow and that we'd better check the dimensions. We did this when we got home, only to discover that the height of the sofa was 2 centimetres greater than the width of the lift door opening.

We phoned the shop and they told us the warehouse would call us back. After my wife put the phone down, I remembered that the settee we’d chosen was mounted on little wooden legs, and that, since this was IKEA, these must be detachable. Sure enough, when the warehouse phoned, they confirmed this and we reckoned we'd be fine.

Well, we reckoned right. On Wednesday evening, as arranged, the assembler from IKEA arrived, lugging three large boxes. Out came that key-like tool resembling an oversized implement for opening a can of corned beef (why on earth do they make them that shape?), without which no IKEA artefact can be put together, and, with just a bit of help from the driver, who suddenly appeared on the scene, our new light beige sofa set was adorning our living room.

That's when the fun started. We'd also paid the Swedes HK$200 to have our two old pieces removed and taken to the landfill in Junk Bay (so now we know how it got its name), where New Zealander language teachers gather like vultures to pick off the richest pickings and haul them off to their shacks in Peng Chau and Lamma Island.

The old 1.5 seater went in fine, but the old 3.5 seater just wouldn't fit, whichever way it was rotated. The pint-sized delivery boy cum assembler was as patient and understanding as someone who’d just been slipped a hundred Hong Kong dollars is liable to be in the circumstances, but there seemed nothing we could do except leave it on the 16th floor lift lobby and wait for all hell to break loose when the security mastiffs reached this level on their nocturnal patrol.

Eager to help, my daughter suggested a chainsaw – which worried me, as I didn’t think she knew what one was, and reckoned she must have been watching The Texas Cheerleader Chainsaw Massacre on that dodgy Mainland movie site when she’d been telling us she was checking out the Oscar contenders.

But that gave me the idea.

"Why not rip the arm off?" I suggested to the little fellow.

And rip it off he did, with a bit of help from our "toolbox" – a fancy name for the canvas shopping bag which holds a few Phillips screwdrivers, assorted nails, a pair of pliers, tubes of glue that you can’t use because they've glued their own lids on and some bits of sandpaper. But it does have a cardboard cutter, which is what he wanted.

A few minutes later and the dismembered sofa was in the lift and heading off for the Tseung Kwan O furniture cemetery, ready to break Kiwi hearts.

"That's funny," I said to my wife and daughter. "What happened to the lift? The previous owner got it up here okay all those years ago."

"Daddy," said my daughter in that way she has when she knows she knows more than me (a way I'm becoming more and more familiar with). "They renovated the lifts two or three years ago and must have put in a false ceiling."

Conceding this, I could only reflect on the heated conversations the security mastiffs must periodically have with angry long-term residents when they move out ... or buy new stuff from the Swedes.