Once upon a time, after finishing a nice dinner, a couple bottles of wine, some beer, vodka and gin someone said “John don’t you have a bench to move”.  The referenced bench was the 8' long Nicholson English bench built by Christopher Schwarz and made from Southern Yellow Pine. My shop is in the basement which lies on the other side of a tight turn at the bottom of the steps.

Earlier in the evening I had taken out a tape and measured the space.  It seemed to me that there was a “9 foot space” that would allow the 8 foot bench to clear the wall. So we put down our glass, picked up the bench, two in front and two at the other end, and proceeded down the stairs. As we moved closer to the “9 foot space” it got tight, well ok, it got stuck. Being that we all were feeling quite optimistic from the wine, we naturally pushed forward until I heard a noise and Chris say "there goes your wall".  Undeterred we pulled back, shifted the bottom up a bit and pushed again. Yes, another sound and another "there goes your wall". After another number of minutes and another sound I looked up to see my wife laughing hard and holding the video camera. As the concerned and helpful wife that she is, she saw the train wreck before it happened and decided to film it. I wonder if I should search Youtube....

Anyway, I did get the bench to the basement and decided to rip out the offending wall!  There must be a moral to this story but I am not sure what it is.  Maybe it is build a bench that can be taken apart?