The AMOUNT of energy the ball has doesn't change. It's 294 joules in Darwin's hand, and it's still 294 joules when the ball hits the ground. It's all PE before he let's it go, and it steadily changes from PE to KE all the way down.
It BEGINS to turn into KE immediately, when Darwin lets go of the ball, and it starts to fall.
More and more PE turns into KE as the ball falls, all the way down.
When the ball hits the ground, it has no more PE left. All of its mechanical energy is then KE.
The general formula to calculate the work is:

where F is the force, d is the displacement of the couch, and
is the angle between the direction of the force and the displacement. Let's apply this formula to the different parts of the problem.
(a) Work done by you: in this case, the force applied is parallel to the displacement of the couch, so
and
, therefore the work is just equal to the product between the horizontal force you apply to push the couch and the distance the couch has been moved:

(b) work done by the frictional force: the frictional force has opposite direction to the displacement, therefore
and
. Therefore, we must include a negative sign when we calculate the work done by the frictional force:

(c) The work done by gravity is zero. In fact, gravity (which points downwards) is perpendicular to the displacement of the couch (which is horizontal), therefore
and
: this means
.
(d) Work done by the net force:
The net force is the difference between the horizontal force applied by you and the frictional force:

And the net force is in the same direction of the displacement, so
and
and the work done is
