Our new bed: part I

Very early in the year - so, at most four weeks after we got back into our apartment following our little mold escapade - our bed died. I was in the living room, The Recruiter and Peanut were in the bedroom where she, Peanut was sitting on her toddler bed and he, The Recruiter, was putting away laundry, when I heard a very loud, very sharp "Bang!" Then silence. I called out "Is everything ok in there?" entirely expecting him to reply, "Oh yeah, fine, I just dropped a basket of clothes on the floor (we have parquet floor laid directly on concrete, so it does make very loud, sharp noises if ever we drop things). Instead, he paused and then called back in a perplexed voice, "No: the bed broke."



"The bed broke? Are you alright?"

"Yeah."

He came wandering out looking very surprised, and explained that he had been changing the sheets on the bed and rolled into the middle of the bed to reach the other side when putting on the fitted sheet when, "Bang!" and the middle of the bed simply collapsed.



After much examination (the hollow chipboard headboard had just worn out enough after only three years that the material holding the screws supporting the centre beam gave way) and deliberation, we opted to toss the bed (I'm sure that it didn't sit on outside for long and that someone scavenged it within minutes, a fact I find very comforting, thinking that someone may be benefiting from our decision not to make do with it) and put the mattress directly on the floor while we decided what solution would work best for us.



"After all," I said, "I'm not that pregnant, yet: I can still get up and down off the floor easily and this will insure that I stay really mobile!"



That was early January, at which point I was, certainly, not that pregnant, yet. But time passes and babies and the bellies they are inside get bigger and the mamas carrying them get less and less inclined to climb up and down off the floor, particularly multiple times a night for trips to the loo. So on The Recruiter's birthday - a day which he got off because his employer is fantastic - my mother gave me a ride to Home Depot and we bought sheets of mdf and lengths of 2x4 and trim and spent about an hour in the cutting area having everything cut to size for me. Boxes of screws and nails, a big bottle of wood glue and a $3 can of paint from the 'oops' cart and we headed home. And finally, at long last, I got it assembled yesterday night.



It isn't finished yet. Two of the benches still need trimming, and they'll all need puttying, further sanding and then painting before we can call this complete. But it's assembled and we slept on it last night.



It's higher than we expected, so I'm a little terrified that Peanut is going to fall and hurt herself. I suppose I'll just need to build a little stool or step for her to use to get in and out of the bed. And maybe lay down some small area rugs to cushion any falls. But we are all thrilled to be up off the floor.

The pics are all clickable and there are some others in the set and most have notes.