The unconventional method Danny Katz used to secure a sliding couch

In my living room I’ve got a couch, and I’ve also got wooden floorboards (sorry, I don’t mean to sound all up myself with my couch and my floorboards. I’m getting to something, I promise).

The thing about having a couch and wooden floorboards is, there’s very little friction between the smooth bottom of the couch legs and the smooth top of the floorboards – so my couch was sliding around the room like a puck on an air-hockey table.

Anytime you sat on the couch, or leaned on the couch, or strolled past the couch and displaced air molecules, the couch began to drift until it bumped into a wall or a coffee table. (Yes, I have walls and a coffee table too, I should have mentioned that before. Yes, I’m doing well.)

This was a living, breathing Amityville Horror couch: sometimes it snuck off to the side, sometimes it was hiding in the corner, sometimes it headed for the front door, trying to make a break for freedom. And a living, breathing couch is not a great thing to have: it was gouging up the floors, scuffing up the walls, giving me motion sickness every time I sat down to watch TV (sorry, got a TV as well. Now I’m just embarrassed).

Sure, I could have put a rug under the couch or gone to a hardware store and bought a pack of Couch-Leg Wooden-Floorboard-Grippers – but that seemed too hard. Instead, I turned to my way-easier home-fixit method: going online and finding an obscure DIY website then following the dodgy advice of a completely unqualified stranger – it’s served me well for years.

That’s how I learnt to clean my shower screen with WD-40 and now I have a sparkly bathroom that reeks like a mechanic’s dunny. That’s how I learnt to fix my warped guitar-neck by “tightening the truss rod” and now I have a non-functional six-string wooden corner-sculpture.

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And that’s how I solved my Moving Couch Crisis. I Googled the words “How to keep couch from sliding on wood floor” and up popped a discussion forum called “How to keep couch from sliding on wood floor” – seemed close enough. Someone named “lefty47” suggested I put “makeup compact-sponges under each couch leg”. So I borrowed some from my wife’s makeup drawer and tried it, but the couch kept sliding around. Although, it did give the floorboards a lovely peachy complexion. Very natural: not cakey at all.

Found another website called Lifehacker. Someone named “Whitson Gordon” suggested I roll rubber balloons onto the couch legs – and I have to say, it felt a bit weird doing it, like rolling on condoms for a furniture-porno called Couch Orgy XXX. It didn’t work either: the balloons just shredded in a couple of days. Probably should’ve used Ultra-Strength latex ones, ribbed.

Then I found a YouTube tutorial called “Make Your Couch Skid-free!” where “Sherri” suggested I create rubber feet for my couch by “squirting hot glue onto the bottom of the couch legs” – which also sounded a bit wrong, like the closing scene of Couch Orgy XXX. This one worked; my couch will never move again.

I may have accidentally glued my couch to the floor. But still.