sofa skirts

[gene]

Howdy,

Do any of you deliver sofas with the skirts folded up against the sofa to keep from messing up the skirt panels when delivering the sofa?

I sometimes tie a rope made of fabric strips to hold the skirt panels up.

I've been thinking of buying a roll of stretch film (6" wide I think) from Home Depot that comes with a handle that I could easily T  pin the skirt panels up, wrap with the stretch film, then take the pins out for delivery.

gene

[sofadoc]

I was just thinking about this topic in conjunction with the mention of the zippered furniture bags on the business side of this forum.

If one were to use the zippered bags to transport a skirted piece, he would just about have to fold the skirt up and secure it.

Occasionally, I've had to completely wrap a (skirted) sofa in plastic for customer pick-up. I usually make something out of remnants or scraps to tie around the sofa to hold the skirt up. Snug, but not too tight, so it don't cause any wrinkles.

That stretch film idea might be a good one.

I normally carry a sofa into the customer's home with no protective covering. I remove all that just before taking it off the truck. My helper KNOWS that I will MURDER him if he doesn't flip the skirt up before grabbing underneath the sofa to lift it.

The local furniture stores bring me a lot of pieces for repair. Their drivers don't give a rat's ass about the skirt. They often unscrew the legs to make it easier to get the sofa through a tight doorway, and just bring the sofa to my shop with no legs on it. The skirt gets totally messed up, along with the bottom edge of the sofa. The delivery guys don't care, because they're aren't getting paid enough to care. 

[MinUph]

  We wrap the skirts up with the film I think its about 6" unless they are something like waterfall skirts. It make handling easy and after wrapping 2 it becomes easy. I pick the stuff up at Walmart for like 6 or 7 bucks a roll. I do this when the piece is ready for delivery. When the piece is completed and cleaned up I throw a plastic bag on it until delivery. I rather deliver with the bag on if possible as it looks better for the customer. Wrapping the skirt helps wrap the plastic on also.
  No pins are needed after you do it a couple times.

[kodydog]

I know in manufacturing they like to use a plastic film to get the skirt ready for shipping. But my furniture isn't shipped half way across the country. I just don't see the point.

After I finish attaching the skirt to the frame I use a steamer to make them lay as flat as humanly possible. Then I take great care to not disturb them during the delivery process. Seems like wrapping them would make them stick straight out.

If the customer is providing help with the delivery, I spend several minutes explaining the crucial flip method and why we do it. I show him or her the stiff lining and have them feel the stiffener inside. Then I explain how grabbing the piece by the skirt will make a really good looking job look really crappy. By the time I'm done they take me pretty seriously and follow my instructions.

One other thing I take time to explain is the 1/4 flip to get a sofa through the door. You can not simply say, okay were going to flip onto its front. You might as well be speaking Greek because they have no idea what your talking about. And if you ask, are you ready, they will always respond with a cheery yes. Some how as the sofa is slowly turning face down their hands become crossed and (I guess) natural instinct says grab the top of the arm by the fabric. This of course puts the entire weight of the bottom back of the sofa onto my right hand causing me to do a little juggling-dancing act. What seems like a no brainer to us folks who have done this hundreds of time, really can be quite complicated.