I was showing some friends my games room. I have a 68cm CRT on one wall for everything up to the Dreamcast. On the opposite wall an LCD screen for xbox onwards. since there a lot more "CRT" consoles in my collection, i figured the couch can face in that direction and LCD stuff i would just sit on the floor with my back against the back of the couch. Which works ok.
So I was showing my friends the setup and I said I might modify a couch one day so that it tilts so that the backrest becomes the base therefore ending up facing the other way. Until my friends wife asked why I don't put the whole couch on some sort of lazy suzan. Of course!
That was months ago. I tend to let ideas mellow for ages. That way they get simpler and simpler. Yesterday I headed to the hardware store with a really simple idea. I just had to buy some castors. At the store I found a little three castored thing for moving objects around and my idea suddenly became even simpler again!
Basically I just removed the centre leg off the couch, reused the coach bolt from the leg and screwed the castors to the couch base with a wooden locating dowel underneath. Then that sits on a few bits of wood with some foam rubber sandwiched in there. The idea being that with no weight on it, the remaining four legs of the couch are pretty much free of the carpet. I can swivel the couch around and when you sit on it, you compress the foam so that all legs are on the carpet again
And waddaya know? It works! Today I fine tuned it by removing the cheap arsed things that pass for glides on the bottom of the legs with proper ones. The originals are a tiny bit of plastic with a nail. One of them fell apart even before I started this project. If the plastic comes off leaving a nail behind I'd hate to see what happens to the carpet! And I'd hate to see what my partner would do to me! The new glides screw on. Got a pack of eight. four for the legs, and the other four I put on the castor base to stop it trying to move around when swivelling the couch. I installed those upside down to give it more of an edge to grip the carpet.