I might have told you …. we went bed shopping recently …
It’s kind of a big deal.
Yes, I said it. 1 single piece of new furniture is kind of a big deal to us.
Picture this: We’ve been happily married for over 4 years. Our “bed” is simply a box spring/mattress on the floor because we’ve never had the $ to spend on a good bed frame. The mattress was a hand-me-down when I got it summer of 2002 (so you can just imagine the quality). Because of the awfulness of the mattress, we’ve had a memory foam pad on it for the last few years. But we’ve never been able to find/afford sheets with a big enough pocket to fit over the mattress and the pad. Which means, every.single.morning. our fitted sheet has come off the corners and exposed the mattress. And in order to make the bed comfortably for another night’s sleep we have to YANK the fitted sheet up as far as it will go and pray the corners of the sheet will stay put long enough for us to fall asleep.
That, and the fact that – because we’re in a converted garage – there’s a couple inch-wide lip of wall all around the room at the baseboard. So the mattress is always a couple inches away from the wall. Which means a) our pillows fall back there and b) we cannot comfortably lean back against the wall (which is annoying since we live in a garage and have nowhere else to sit).
Fun, huh?
But, of course, all of this is manageable and I’ve put up with most of it for years because I was a starving college student and that’s what you do when you’re poor. You buy food, electricity, pay your student loan and have a little $ for Christmas gifts. And you put up with crappy hand-me-down furniture.
But, guess what!? We are no longer starving college students.
It may be the only piece of furniture to put in our new house when we buy it … but at least we have someplace awesome to sit/sleep in our little home.
We spent 2 or 3 Sundays driving around the area. The first place we went to …. wasn’t there any more. Someone needs to update that internet listing. A lot of furniture places are small, with maybe 6 or 8 different bed frames to choose from.
And between my taste and Andrew’s taste we didn’t tend to find hardly ANY that we would even consider.
No white wood, no metal, no sleigh beds, no 4-poster beds, nothing too ornate.
Doesn’t leave much.
The first Sunday we were out, we stopped by Crate and Barrel. Which IS a major corporation, and I would have liked to buy from an independent store, but we had already been to 3 that day and didn’t see ANYTHING …. so Crate and Barrel it is.
Immediately walked in and found a bed we both loved.
That was about 2+times what we wanted to spend.
But at least we were getting somewhere ….
After what felt like a lot of shopping over several weeks and about 12 different stores and only finding beds at Crate and Barrel that we genuinely liked, we just bit the bullet. The Sunday before Thanksgiving we went to Sit and Sleep (walked in and bought a mattress about 20 min later – easiest sale of that guy’s day), Crate and Barrel (bought a lovely quilt on sale and ordered the frame), and went home to wait (it was all delivered on the same day a week or so later)
Building the new bed frame:
And:
TA-DA !!!!
and the mattress – oh, the mattress – is nice and firm. I’m hoping it’ll last us 10 years! AND something about something with the springs (yea, I don’t know the lingo), means that when Andrew tosses and turns my side of the bed doesn’t shake around and wake me up. Andrew’s been sleeping so much better on this new bed….
I can’t help it – I’m just so happy!
a closer look at the new bed frame, sheets and quilt :
It’s miraculous. …. it’s really amazing how much of a difference this bed makes. I feel like we’ve finally turned the corner from living like college students to (almost) living like adults. You know, except for the living-in-a-garage thing.
In the meantime …. this is where I’ll be. Blogging, christmas gift wrapping, movie watching, etc.
