Swapping Out Beds

Oy, I really must be insane.  Really.

This morning while I was washing dishes, all of a sudden I heard this little voice telling me something.  Now let me tell you, darlings, that little voice is almost always T-R-O-U-B-L-E! 

And what, you ask, was that little voice telling you, Jan?  Well, it was telling me to do what I should have done back in February when I put up my mesh canopy in my (mistress - no masters in this house) bedroom.  It was telling me, rather insistently (how rude!) that I should swap out the beds in my room and the guest room.

What?  I cried!  Are you nuts!  Things are pefectly fine the way they are.  And, indeed, they are.  Here is a recent pic of my bedroom (showing the top sheet of the slippery red striped satin set I scored at TJMaxx -- the set I'm now only using pillow cases from because the satin sheets were too slippery!):

I have been very happy with my bedroom since I got serious in February and rearranged it, added the canopy, jazzed things up, cozied it up, made it altogether much more liveable.  And, true to my pledge, I have faithfully made up my bed every single morning, even on the weekends, ever since!  Ta da!  Isn't it pretty!!!

And so, you may well question my sanity.  I snorted at the little voice and kept washing the dishes.  Then I cleaned up the kitchen, fed the squirrels, and settled down to read the Sunday paper.

Didn't do any good.  Once that little voice speaks, I may as well be a zombie, totally in control of something or someone else.  Spooky! 

Hmmm, maybe I am a zombie...cuz sure enough, about 10:30 a.m., I headed upstairs and proceeded to tear both beds apart!

The first thing I did was take down the canopy in my bedroom.  It has been shaken out a few times but not washed since having been installed in February.  It was time!  So, down to the washing machine it went while I tackled disassembling the beds!

Of course, it all took much longer than I thought.  I kept thinking to myself the Packers are coming on at 3:30 p.m.  The Packers are coming on at 3:30 p.m.  And I was nervous about this game -- more about that later.  Better to keep myself occupied.

And ohmygoddess, I sure kept myself occupied.  Worked up major sweats and really got a work-out. And here Heart Doctor #2, who told me under no circumstances should I ever lift a snow shovel again (HA!), neglected to warn me about the dangers of tearing beds apart and putting them back together again.  HA!  Well, I didn't keel over from a heart attack, Doc.  HA HA!

My bed already disassembled and on the left you can see the footboard of
the guest room bed leaning against my dresser.  I carried the bed frame into
the guest room.  Fortunately, I was NOT swapping out mattresses!

Guest room bed, partially disassembled.  Do you see those thing wire-
thingies?  Those will play a starring role later on...
 

The headboard from my former bed, waiting to move into it's new digs.
 

And here it is, in its new home.  Oh, I decided to switch up the bedding
too, while I was at it.  This is a set that I used in the guest room years
ago, when it first became a guest room!  It's been in storage for years!
Hmmm, I'm liking it all over again, a real change from the black and cream.
Oh oh, what am I saying?  Those are the colors I have in my room...

The beds came apart easily enough, it was getting them back together again that took be FOREVER!  Ach! 

My bed, moved to the guest room -- the box spring didn't quite fit into the frame, no matter how I heaved and shoved.  Whew!  Talk about working up a sweat!  So I thought to myself, what would B-I-L Fred do?  Of course!  He'd hammer the damn thing into submission.  So I dashed downstairs to the junk drawer and pulled out a hammer.  Fred would be proud of me!  BANG BANG BANG!  I also took the precaution of loosening up the nuts and bolts on the screws before I started banging away :)  Voila!  Worked like a charm, and I didn't ruin the bed frame.  It's from the 1970's, and although it's got a non-terminal case of rust, it is still perfectly functional, the wheels work and it's very sturdy.  The box frame popped into the widened-out frame perfectly; I tightened up the nuts and bolts, quickly ironed-up the bedskirt and placed it on the box spring, and then arranged the mattress on top. 

Being as this is a guest room that isn't used very often, these are not very expensive mattresses, but they are comfortable, as I tested them out for about a week back in 2009 when the mistress bedroom was torn apart, wallpaper border removed and the walls painted from bubble-gum pink (what WAS I thinking???) to "powder puff" white by Sears Easy Living.  As you can see, though -- in comparison to what this headboard and frame looked like in its former setting, this mattress set is a good two inches lower than the set I use in my room, and the 14" drop bedskirt fits okay. 

And then, it was on to my room, a snap, I thought.  HA!

I got the frame into the headboard and footboard in no time at all.  And then, I had to reattach those thin wire-thingies -- you can see them in the two photos above.  I think it took me at least an hour to do it, and a more frustrating, exhausting hour I haven't spent in quite awhile, let me tell you!  What a work-out, heaving and shoving, trying to "stretch" those little metal hooky-things into the matching hole in the frame on the other side.  Just was-not-happening! 

Not exactly sure when it occurred to me to try loosening the two screws in the middle of the frame on either side, but that was a chore too, because one screw on each side refused to budge!  And so I fiddled and faddled and putzed and putzed and eventually, I succeeded in forcing the frame together sufficiently to get the metal wire-thingies into their respective holes.  Then I tightened the screws back up.

Fortunately, the box spring fit just right into the frame, no further messing around was necessary.  Good thing too, for I was just about spent physically by then, and when I realized it was like 3:25 p.m. and I'd miss my 2:00 p.m. blood pressure meds, DAMN!  Now I'll have to wait until 10:30 p.m. to take my final blood pressure meds for the evening, when I'm ready for bed NOW (6:25 p.m.)  LOL!

Not content to wear myself out putting the beds back together, I decided to flip this box spring and 200 pound mattress -- all by myself.  I succeeded.  OUCH.  Here the mattress is "resting" while I dashed downstairs to iron up the 16" drop bedskirt, since the old one would no longer be long enough.

And here it is, all put together:

I see I need to do some further tugging adjustments to that bedskirt.

Issues:  The canopy, fresh from the washer, was a twisted-up mess!  I got it straighted out, and thought better about putting it into the dryer.  Can't hang it outside (only 24 F outside), and don't have lines strung in the basement.  So, what to do, what to do.  I hung up the wet canopy in the bedroom.  LOL! 

Well, it's mesh and is drying as quickly as I can type this.  Turns out the footprint of this bed is SMALLER by 3 inches length and 3 inches width than my old bed.  Go figure.  So the canopy looks HUGE hanging from the ceiling.  It may look weird tied to the posts, which was my original plan.  Drat!  The old bed didn't have a footboard, and the canopy curtains hung straight down, whether tied (during the day) or let loose (at night).  Tied and floofed up, they looked just fine.  But with these posts and the footboard, it will now be obvious that the canopy is too big.  Well, it was designed to fit from a full size to king size bed.

So, not sure what I'm going to do, but nothing more tonight except to make up the beds.  I think my Packers lost, by the by.  I couldn't watch the game.  Every time I clicked on it on the t.v. something disastrous would happen. So I turned it off.  The last I knew, it was a tie score, but I think they went into over time and Minnesota was threatening to score a TD.  DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN!

Okay, I'm going to watch "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" on commercial t.v. and feed myself.  Starving!  I'll worry about canopies and such on New Year's Day (a day off, woo woo!)

10:07 p.m.:

Beds are made up.  Laundry done and bedding packed away.  Here's the guest room - bad photo.  Some things yet to do to make this room more inviting.  I have a NYC poster to put up behind the bed.  My Bombay Company small bullseye mirror used to be hung above the bed, but I borrowed that earlier this year to use in an arrangement above the fireplace in the front room downstairs, and didn't put anything up to replace it.  I was hemming and hawing about what to do.

This has been a "New York" room in the making for years now, ever since my first trip to NYC in 2005.  A water color of the lovely fountain outside of Bergdorf's on 5th Avenue and Columbus is in the room (bought in 2005, along with a photo that Mr. Don took of the same fountain during out return trip in 2009.  It's on the eastern-most corner of Central Park.  A stroll up 5th Avenue to (I think), about 97th Street or so puts one outside the grand facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I have spent much time.  It is rightfully known as one of the best museums in the world!!!!!

 

 

Some other photos and souvenir prints are already in the room, along with little miniatures of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty that Mr. Don gave to me some years ago. I just need to pull it all together.

 

If you look carefully, you can see Mr. Don's miniatures on top of their respective images on the wall beside the window. The bottom photo is Mr. Don, our friends Georgia and Michelle, and me, taken outside the Statue of Liberty. Above that photo is a framed print of a view of the Empire State Building that was given to me by Michelle after our 2009 trip. The large poster that will go behind the bedhead is a print of the Empire State Building from the same vantage point as Michelle's gift, but taken from Central Park during the winter of 1960. It is absolutely stunning in black and white. Hmmm, maybe I will need to put back the black and cream bedding after all... Geez!

 

And, my room:

 

 

 

Didn't turn out so bad after all, but I think I may need to get a step to help me into my suddenly much taller bed, eek!  Look how far above the cross bar at the foot of the bed the mattress is!  The canopy looks okay, even when tied to the bed posts. Whatever dust was caught up in the canopy is now gone, Thank Goddess, and many of the bothersome wrinkles (but not all of them) have disappeared.  Seems I really must get serious and pull out my steamer to get rid of the rest of them.  How does one steam mesh? 

 

One last look:

 

 

 

As you can see, I banished my red satin pillows.  I was not able to bunch up the feather pillows within them the way I can do with 100% cottom pillows.  So the pillows are now covered in black and white gingham check.

 

Geez Louise!  The mattresses are so high that you can't even see the head of the bead with the back pillows up!

 



And I really must go to bed. Packers DID lose.  By a field goal.  Three points.  Yeah, right. Tomorrow, just in time to greet the New Year, our windchills in Southeastern Wisconsin will be plunging below zero. Great. Just Great.

We will be meeting those fricking Vikings in the first round of the play-offs at LEGENDARY LAMBEAU FIELD (imagine echo effect while reading that...) next weekend at 7 p.m. We are going to KILL THOSE SUCKAS. They play dirty. They do not deserve to be in the play-offs, let alone again the Packers. I think the fix was in, though. A good way to juice up ratings and improve the line in Las Vegas. But, as Harry Potter knows, Good Always Prevails Against Evil, even if we lose an occasional battle or two.