U-Haul Blues

My wife and I recently bought new furniture. Now, for some people, this may not seem like a major deal but it is for us.

The first problem is one of volume, the second problem is one of geography.

When we bought our new bed about three years ago, we snagged a cheap bedframe just to have something a little better than a hollywood frame. To give you an idea of its quality, we only paid ~$200 for it and its assembly requires the use of an allen wrench. Having spent the bulk of our investment on the mattress, we only recently started looking for a new bed frame. What ended up happening was that we stumbled across a full bedroom suite at a liquidation price. Headboard, footboard, dresser, mirror and nightstands... now, remember, we were only looking for THE BED.

What we were replacing included a chest of drawers as well. I told my wife that I was only using one drawer and suggested we find something that could replace that function but didn't necessarily serve that function. A week later, we found a Door Chest that is an entertainment armoire on the top and a chest of drawers on the bottom.

To recap, we have a brand new headboard, footboard, dresser, mirror, nightstands and entertainment center/armoire.

I mentioned a problem of geography. We live in Stillwater, OK and bought the bedroom suite in Moore, OK. As you might imagine, the delivery charge to transport 73 miles is a little pricy. A week later, we were visiting my folks and found the door chest... in Kansas City. If 73 miles was not worth the price of delivery, 300 miles was certainly out of the question.

I got to thinking about what this was going to require and decided to take the latter part of the week off. I checked the weather and, on Tuesday at least, it was supposed to rain Friday-Sunday. The pickup just wouldn't do - I was going to need something to shield our purchases from the elements. A phone call to the local U-Haul and I had a 5x8 trailer reserved for Friday morning.

On Wednesday, I spent the entire day cleaning and rearranging the garage. There are still a lot of boxes being stored there from when we moved in about two years ago (can you say "procrastination"?). My mission was to create space. First, for the furniture we were removing, second for the furniture we were receiving. Four sets of heavy-duty shelving from Wal-Mart and eight hours later, we had a contiguous space in which to place the furniture. As a side note, the forecast had changed and rain was not expected until Monday... but I didn't cancel the trailer.

Thursday was spent emptying the existing furniture and cleaning up the bedroom. I managed to move about half of it out to the garage. The rest would have to wait until Kevin was there to help. This also took all day. I ended up taking a nap about 3:00 and my legs were so stiff and sore when I woke up that I felt like I weighed about twice as much as I do.

Needless to say, I was a tired and sore by the time Friday rolled around. I picked up the trailer - wondering if it was really worth the expense - and went back home to finish unloading the bedroom. Kevin showed up as I was disassembling the bed. I had a taped episode of Mythbusters playing so Kevin watched that while I finished my disassembly (they blew up a house!). After that, we took the bed frame and dresser to the garage and loaded the bed, dresser, mirror, chest of drawers and a desk, that was already in the garage, into the trailer. We hauled that all down to Norman and unloaded it at my mother-in-law's house.

I was still wondering if I had wasted my money on the trailer - the weather was BEAUTIFUL! - when we arrived at the furniture store. After getting the last bit of paperwork out of the way, Kevin and I went across the street to the warehouse for pickup. My reservations about the trailer were quickly squashed as we figured out that not everything would fit in the trailer... meaning that not everything would have fit in the pickup. We ended up with the headboard and mirror in the open bed. When we got back to the house, Kevin and I were glad that someone else had loaded this stuff. The dresser was about 250lbs!! (~103KG) We had to figure out how to lift it over the 1/2" lip into the garage.

We managed to get unloaded, then headed out to get some dinner. We settled on Rib Crib. When we got there, we had to wait about 20-30 minutes but neither one of us had anywhere else to go. We sat down and each ordered a beer. The waitress talked us into the "beermeister" mug for an extra dollar and brought us each about a pint and a half of Shiner Bock... oh yeah! Those frosty beverages tasted gooooooood after the long day we'd had. We toasted to beer, to hard work, and to meat. We both ordered the Baby Back Combo and chowed down on a half rack of baby back ribs, smoked brisket and a couple of side items (I had beans and slaw). It was a great end to a busy week.

Alas, the enjoyment was short-lived for me. Early Saturday morning, I saddled up for Kansas City to fetch the armoire. The pick-up went without much fanfare, although I had to figure out how to secure the load by myself, and I headed home Sunday afternoon. I ended up unloading by myself but it wasn't too much of a hassle due to the size, shape and weight of the two pieces. I was able to use leverage to swing them around and push them into the garage.

So, why is everything still in the garage? When we moved into the house, we intended to paint the bedroom before we moved in the furniture. It didn't work out that way so we figured now was as good a time as any - better even - to paint.

Ugh... more work.