Christmas Under Construction, Part 2

So while we were having all this work done my wife decided we may as well make some other changes.

She has wanted to upgrade from a queen bed to a king for some time. We live in a small house and our bedroom was too small for a king unless we got rid of all the furniture. We’d have to move to the main floor and into the room we currently use as a guest room.

I told her I would think about it under the following conditions.
First, she must prove that a king bed would fit with enough room for 2 dressers without making the room impassable. In order to convince me I would require a scale drawing along with to scale paper cut outs of the furniture. She is a landscape designer, so she has training and practical experience in scale drawing. She did the drawing and everything fit, even with the additions of 2 nightstands.

Second, she must get rid of the queen bed in the guest room.

She sold it on Craigs List in 24 hours.

Third, we must not dip into savings to make the purchase.

She had Christmas and Birthday money and Craigs List money all set aside.

I was trapped.

She ordered a Sleep Number bed from Select Comfort and it arrived just before Christmas. We left The Peanut in daycare over the holidays in order to be able to get as much work done as possible.

On the 26th we cleared out the guest room of the junk that had piled up and moved a dresser with a hutch to the basement where it was converted to a book case and game and toy storge. On the 27th I removed the old closet system the former owners had installed and painted the trim and the ceiling and closet. On the 28th we painted the walls installed a new closet system and I found myself in Ikea at 8 in the evening. After handing my credit card to the cashier there and ensuring some Swedish kid would got to college for another semester I had what seemed like half a ton of pressboard furniture piled dangerously in the Family Truckster.

We got home, got The Peanut to bed and decided to assemble the bed frame and mattress. We got that done, made the bed up and I went to Taco Bell for a late night snack. We got to bed around one AM and slept in a room with no curtains and just a bed.

The next day we built the 2 dressers and night stands, tried to straighten up the rest of the house and hung the curtains and started to get the bathroom cleaned up and prepped for priming and painting.

I don’t know what we did on the 30th, probably more cleaning. New Years Eve we slept in a little and got our shit together to go over to one of her friends houses to ring in the New Year.

Since we got a metric ass load of snow that night and into the early morning my wife went to bed and slept until 11am. She works for a Company We All Know and in the winter part of her job is to act as a dispatcher for their plowing and salting crews. She was worried about being called in at 2 or 3am and having to work 12 hours. She left orders for me to let her sleep so that she could get as much rest as possible against the chance she might be summoned.

They called on New Years Day to tell her there was a 50-50 chance of either working an afternoon shift or not getting called at all. That let me help with laundry and then do some snowblowing until I got the machine tangled up in the chain link fence and broke a pair of shear pins on the right hand blades. The pins did what they were supposed to luckily, but that took my machine down to below 50% effective. Luckily a neighbor polished off the rest of the driveway for me.

I went over to Lowes to see about a couple of new sheer pins. When I got into the parking lot my wife called to tell me that she had to be at work in an hour. I hurried through there, first looking for sheer pins (they only had ones for older model machines) checking on some doors for the linen closet and laundry chute (delayed again) then over to paint for another quart of Olympic semi gloss interior latex Fragrant Cloves (orange) paint and finally into hardware to see if they had some sheer pins that would work (no dice).

I made it home as my wife was packing her dinner and getting ready to head out. She took off, I hung out with The Peanut, fed her dinner and put her to bed. I read one of my Christmas books and went to bed. My wife (let’s call her Mona from now on) came home around 2:30am. The next morning it was back to the office for a rest.

Next time I’ll tell you about my Christmas loot and keep you updated on the bathroom as events warrant. We hope to have most of it complete and functioning this weekend.

Wish me luck.