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attic, part 11:
moving in
movin' on up/tooooo the east siiiide...
Throughout the Attic
Makeover Extravaganza, I'd harbored a nagging concern
that either one or both of
our mattresses wouldn't fit up the stairs. It's a pillow top queen -- which
means thick and less maneuverable -- and a queen size box spring -- which means
rigid and not at all maneuverable.
Well. We had friends
over to help us move, although we of course bribed them with good
food first. They would've come and helped us regardless because
they're awesome like that, but when it comes to moving furniture,
bribery is key to maintaining those friendships. And this is where
having a chef in the family is handy. I mean, who passes up dinner
made just for them by a real chef? Nobody,
that's who.
We ended up visiting and
laughing until late into the night and the time got away from us so when
we finally started moving the bed, it was close to midnight. The guys
decided to move the box spring first, since that was most likely to cause
trouble. To my surprise, they maneuvered it through the doorway, around
the corner and started it up the stairs without too much trouble. The
first obstacle was cleared.
Turns out? Maneuvering it
through the doorway and around the corner wasn't the thing to worry about;
the box spring lodged against the overhang in the stairwell. For ten
minutes, the guys tried valiantly to find a position between the stairs
and the overhang, tilting it every which way, and the closest they could
get it was still with a stubborn inch of mattress wedged against the
overhang. At which point Sal said, "Screw it...let's buy a futon."
The four of us stood in
the stairwell with the mattress lodged between us, pondering the
situation. Our friends, who must've noticed the look of desperation on my
face, offered suggestions for how to deal with the problem. He even
jokingly said, "You know, it's too bad this isn't a king, then you'd have
two twins for box springs." This is foreshadowing.
We decided to bring
the pillowtop upstairs so we could at least sleep in our new attic, even
if it was on the floor. The guys un-wedged the box spring and took it back
to the old bedroom, then moved the pillowtop, which involved a little
bending and squishing, but they got it upstairs with a minimum of fuss. By
then, it was well past midnight and we were all tired, but as a testament
to what great friends they are, they offered to help make the bed before
they left. Hee.
When Sal got home from
work the next day, we decided to hack a chunk out of the overhang where
the box spring kept hanging up. Drywall's easy enough to patch and we have
mad drywalling skillz, yo. So Sal very
methodically marked out where he'd cut, nice and neat. He had to use the
Sawz-All (reciprocating saws are Teh Awesome) because we'd used the metal
corner protector strips along that edge. Sigh. I remember how proud I was
at how sharp and straight that corner turned out. See how lovely?
Let's all take a moment of
silence as we remember it how it was for a brief time.
Once he'd cut through the
drywall and down to the stud underneath, it looked like plenty of room to
fit the corner of mattress through and would be a snap to patch later.
So we hauled the mattress
through, finagled it around the corner, up the stairs...and it wedged
against the overhang. GRRRR. Maneuvered it back out again, chopped away a
little more, lather, rinse, repeat. We did this little operation four more
times before we finally just left the mattress in place and let it get
covered with drywall dust while Sal gave up any pretense of making the
notch nice and neat. The result looked like it'd been gnawed away by
beavers with missing teeth, but we did finally get the bed shoved the rest
of the way up the stairs.
Both halves of the bed now
safely upstairs, the rest of the furniture was a snap. Our old bedroom
furniture -- two chests of drawers and a dresser -- moved upstairs with
us; they're all painted in a black & white sponge technique so they
look fine. Our bedside tables, painted in the same b&w
technique, are just the cheap round decorative tables you get at a department
store and put a long table skirt on. However, the cats long since rendered
them unstable from an engineering standpoint. One of Hobbes' favorite
games was "Let's see how many legs we can knock out from under the table
before everything on it comes crashing to the floor and Mommy flies out of
bed in a sleep-deprived rage." We'll salvage the tops and turn them into
side tables for the reading nook, but for nightstands, we needed something
else.
Which is where
craigslist
comes in.
For some people, it's
gambling. For others, it's alcohol. For us, however, our addiction of
choice is the thrill of The Deal. Hunting for Exactly The Right Thing at
Exactly The Right Price and then, when it appears, pouncing and emerging
victorious.
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