Monday 16 January 2012

Making the bed

This weekend was dominated by a bed. Lara's new "mid-sleeper" bed arrived at 9am Saturday morning. Argos had been very efficient - first calling last Saturday to say delivery would be this Saturday between 7am and noon ("if that's OK?"). Then on Friday evening they texted to say it would be between 10am and noon. Then the delivery man phoned at 8.30am on Saturday to say they would be with us in an hour, and sure enough 30 minutes later they turned up, complete with two large, heavy boxes and a mattress. I'd just had time to dismantle Lara's previous bed, ready to put it back together in Junior's room.

It took me 45 minutes to unpack the boxes, get the wood into organised piles and sort out the screws, bolts, nails and other fiddly bits. It took Lara 0.45 seconds to knock down one pile of wood that was leaning against the wall. There were two parts to the assembly; the bed frame and then the chest of drawers/slidy desk part. The bed frame went together without any hiccups, the instructions matched the way we wanted the frame, with the ladder to the left of the bed... This was about 2pm by now, and I set to putting the chest of drawers together...
Which is when the fun started. The instructions for the chest of drawers were based on the ladder being on the right-hand side of the bed.. I hadn't appreciated this, and followed the drawings religiously, and ended up with a chest of drawers with a shelf unit that fitted perfectly under the bed, except the drawers were behind the ladder, and so wouldn't open fully. Hmm, I'd just nailed the back of the unit on as well...
So, I took a deep breath, got the nails out (with extreme prejudice), took the whole unit apart and put it back together in the ladder-to-the-left orientation. It was 5pm by now and Lara and Olga had already gone up to Lara's friend, Zoe's, house for drinkies, so I packed up for the night and went to join them.

After a bit of a lazy morning on Sunday, then a bit of work, then a lovely walk down by the Thames in Cookham with the boys (crisp, clear weather, and we bumped into another 5 year old male Airedale called Stanley), and a quick trip to the pub for a swift half (Lara's idea!), a roast chicken dinner, I set about finishing the drawer unit and fitting the slidy desk after tea. It was 9pm before the last screw was tightened, but the desk slides out, the drawers open and close, and Lara hadn't fallen out of bed after her first night on Saturday.
We're really pleased with the end result, and Lara is too. I climbed up onto her bed this morning whilst she was pretending to do homework on her desk, when I was told in no uncertain terms that "NO adults are allowed on my bed".
I took some photos as I was building it, here's the result...