Week ending 2/5/10

On Saturday, we had just one goal for the day: get the bed set up and sleep on it that night!

Of course, it went awry as home improvement projects usually do. I predicted we would not be sleeping on our new bed that night and C thought I was being pessimistic. But there were too many steps that had to go right to get it done in one day so I knew, home improvement statistics being what they are, that chances were high that at least one thing would go wrong.

We started at 11:00 a.m. by removing everything from our room, disassembling our old bed and cleaning the room and floor. Then we unboxed and assembled the foundation (like a boxspring, except no springs).

We started building our platform and made a crucial mistake early on - we thought the foundation was 6' wide by 7' long (it's a California King, the only size long enough for C). When we unboxed and assembled it, the measurements were some odd numbers and instead of sticking to our plan we decided to size our platform the same as the foundation. This led to lots more cutting than we had planned and made the project harder. We also ran into the lumber not being sized as it is labeled, e.g. a 1x12 is really only 11.25 inches wide. I know this and have worked with this on many occasions, but what threw me here is that the boards I got were grouped not with lumber but with hobby type boards that usually measure true to label. Around 7:00, we made the mandatory second trip to Home Depot. Every DIY'er knows that you never do a project with fewer than 2 trips to the home improvement store.

After waiting in line a LOOOOOOOONG time to return our old stuff, we set about finding materials that would be a better fit. We found nice, sanded plywood that was not too expensive and decided to get it. We then waited a LOOOOOOOOOONG time to get it cut.

At this point I was really tired and ready to call it a day, but C wanted to push on so we did. We got the platform built, put the foundation and cover in place and started assembling the mattress (we bought natural latex, which comes split down the middle and each side has 4 layers. All this is contained in a box-shaped, zippered fabric cover). We began having trouble fitting the layers and kept wrestling them but just couldn't get them to fit. Finally we measured the cover and found some weird measurements which we found out were for a regular king sized bed! At 10:00, we had to throw in the towel, put our old mattress on the living room floor, make it with sheets, etc and resign ourselves to more crappy sleep. How disappointing and exhausting. The house had boxes, lumber, our old bed, tools, supplies, etc all over and looked like a bomb went off.

Here's our old bed, right before we took it apart:

and here it is with the mattress removed:



On Sunday, we called the company and they said they would look into it first thing Monday morning when the warehouse crew came in. By 4:00 Monday, I hadn't heard from them and called them. They called back and said they were shipping a new cover on Tuesday via 2nd day air, which meant Thursday delivery. Nice. I understand orders get screwed up, but how about overnighting it since we're sleeping on our living room floor, on a horrible mattress in a house that looks like a bomb went off. Oh, and how about overnighting it on Monday? I don't know what we would have done if we had gotten rid of our old mattress.

On Tuesday, they sent confirmation that the cover did ship and should be here Thursday.

On Wednesday, I spent 3 hours getting one shade up. Is everyone in home improvement incompetent? The shades were missing some screws, which I understand, but I called customer dis-service during their normal hours and left a message. Nobody called back for hours. Finally, I tried the online chat, and got a response right away. Uh, hello, if you have people available via chat, can't they answer the phone too? When I told the woman who responded about the missing screws, she simply said she would send an email to customer service. Uh, and just WHO ARE YOU? The link says "chat live with customer service." No apology or explanation was offered and she was unable to give me a tracking number, ticket number or any estimation of how long it would take. I'm going to my local hardware store and buy replacement screws on Friday. Screw them!

Thursday, I spent 1.5 hours sanding and got one window done. I'm starting the next interior door soon.

The mattress cover did not arrive today - what a shock!

On Friday, I called the mattress place first thing and after several calls they finally tracked down my cover and said it's on a truck and scheduled to be delivered today. The rep did have the factory start a new one so it would be ready to ship in the event it didn't arrive. The good news is that it did arrive and we spent a few hours in the evening assembling the bed and had a great night's sleep on it. OMG, it's heavenly! I'll post pictures once it's made up with new bedding. I bought cheap california king sized sheets a few years ago, but I'm going to buy nice ones and a new comforter since our queen doesn't fit.

Hours to date on windows and doors: 351.25