attic, part 11: moving in
07.05 movin' on up/tooooo the east siiiide...
click to see the full photo galleryThroughout 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. And boy, did we ever. But that's a tale for another day....