So there has been a slight delay in receiving my shipment of Thomas Payne Furniture.Next, remove the lower rails because they bolt directly to the seats. After you remove the four foot-pad bolts from each chair, cut any zip ties securing the wiring and lift the chairs out. Right now it looks like the delay is only two days longer than the anticipated delivery date.
So, what Tammy and I did in the meantime is remove the existing Thomas Payne furniture. Let me tell you that it sounds a lot easier than it really is. The bright side is that you can do this yourself. It will be even easier if you have someone like Tammy help, because it is a two person job when it comes to removing the trifold sofa. I would also recommend getting a heavy moving blanket to protect your flooring. You will want to slide the furniture towards the door without destroying the flooring.
Start by removing the back cushions; only Velcro holds them in place, so simply pull them off .Next open up the trifold sofa (as a sleeper) and unscrew the hinges. They are located on the Stationary Back Assembly and then remove it. The next step involves removing a couple clips from some hinge pins that hold the part of the sofa that has the folding legs. I believe Lippert refers to this as the “Couch Seat Assembly”. You will need to push the hinge pins in with a screwdriver to remove this section. Once you remove that section you can remove the rest of the trifold by angling it out the entrance door. You will need a helper or Tammy for this step as it is quite awkward and still quite heavy.
The chairs were a little harder to disassemble.ou need to move the seats forward to access the clips that hold the backrest in place. If the lower rails are screwed into the floor, remove those screws so you can slide the chairs away from the wall. Quite frankly, I do not think these rails need to be screwed down at all. In some cases, these seats arrive from the factory unattached. Once the clips are pressed (outward) you lift the backrest off. Figuring out how to move these clips took me about fifteen minutes, as there were no directions on-line about how to release them.
Next, remove the lower rails because they bolt directly to the seats. After you remove the four foot-pad bolts from each chair, cut any zip ties securing the wiring and lift the chairs out. Be careful removing the chairs because they are still very heavy.
As with moving chairs or sofas in or out of a stick and brick house, you will have the same issues with the travel trailer. You must approach the door carefully so you can angle the furniture out without damage. If not, you will damage a wall. This is definitely a two-person job with perhaps the exception of the individual seats.
After you remove the seats, make sure you find any screws that may have fallen into the carpeting. My theater seats had only one screw holding them down; the other three lay loose in the carpet. Keep in mind that any loose screws will damage your flooring when you move your slide room. Also if you decide you want to screw your seats into the floor, use caution. Make sure the screws you use will not go through the floor and proceed to rip your vinyl flooring when the slide room moves.
So, now lets fast forward to the arrival of the new furniture.
As it turns out it was five days late, so it kind of made a mess of our week. It was supposed to be delivered on Monday; then that was changed to Wednesday. then Thursday which then turned into Friday. It’s always nice to stay at home waiting for something that never comes – said no one ever!I planned to install the furniture on Friday, but it arrived at 5:00 P.M., which made that impossible.
The furniture came on a really horrible looking extra-long pallet. My worst fears came true when I saw a pallet board piercing the side of the tri-fold sleeper box. We split the sides of the box and got lucky as we couldn’t find any damage. The next step was to move the tri-fold and chairs into my shop for the night.
The next day we started by moving the tri-fold sofa sleeper out of the box. The back wasn’t attached, but everything else was assembled, which caused a problem. They now attach the “Couch Seat Assembly” with a more complicated clevis pin clip instead of the simpler clips used on the previous model. It made taking the sections apart very difficult and even harder to reassemble. I would recommend that Lippert go back to their previous clip. I would also recommend assembling only the arms to the rails so you can easily transfer the rest of the couch to the trailer for final assembly. Putting it back together is much easier than taking it apart. Including directions would have helped, but the Lippert provided no instructions for the chairs or the tri-fold sofa.
Tammy and I moved everything piece meal into the Travel Trailer and began the reassembly process of the tri-fold sofa. It went relatively easily with the exception of the clevis pin clips. Once that was completed we moved onto assembly of the theater seats.
We assembled the seat quickly because the backs simply slide onto their rails, and the wiring connects easily. All the wiring is color-coded, so it’s hard to make a mistake. After that, we slid one seat into the brackets on the second seat. That step was a bit tricky, but we completed it without taking too much time. Lastly we tried all the electrical features and everything worked fine. We did not anchor the chairs to the floor. Given that there was only one screw holding the last set down, it just doesn’t seem like these will go anywhere.
I have to say the end product has a nice look to it.
If you compare this picture to the one with our old furniture you can see how the lighter fabric really brightens the trailer.
The next step was to anchor the tri-fold sofa into the floor. This is a little difficult in an Imagine as the flooring is a thin piece of subflooring over a thick Styrofoam material. So there really isn’t a lot for the screws to lock into. I will be curious to see how well the screws hold. If they fail I will come up with a different plan.
All in all I’m very happy with the results of the project.
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