Funny story here about that bed. In my family we have a tradition of sorts, which has now evolved into a joke most of the time. It started with my Grandmother's house, we would write our name with chalk on something that we wanted to take when it became available. It's evolved now to where actual chalk doesn't even need to be used, but you can "chalk" something, aka call dibs, without having to write your name on it. So anyway, a long time ago I was in my gramma's barn and chalked a wrought iron bed frame that I liked. Lord knows how old I was at the time. But, as soon as I got my first apartment she started calling me to ask when I was going to take that bed. While I had forgotten all about it, Grandma forgot nothing. So after some pestering the bed frame eventually made its way from the barn in Massachusetts to my apartment.
This is the closest likeness I can find to my bed, although this is a twin and mine is a full. Even the peeling ivory paint is the same! I still can't bring myself to photograph our bedroom with that hideous wallpaper. After I acquired it I rigged some slats to fit across the old metal frame. I didn't have much to work with but I bought some 1 x 3" pine boards at Home Depot and had them cut to length. Then I used a hand saw to cut shorter end caps to keep the slats in place, and nailed those to the slats. It worked for a while, but nails were clearly not the best choice and the ends were constantly wiggling themselves off. So I'd pop them back on, sometimes put another nail in, and it would hold a bit longer. Several moves later most of the caps were lost as was one of the boards. Still, it all managed to hold up okay. Until this last move. I think there was only one board with a cap on one end, and nothing wanted to stay in place.
So Friday morning I took myself once again to Home Depot to fix this problem once and for all. I bought two long boards to serve as runners to hold the slats and the box spring firmly in place. And this time I bought screws. Although it was time consuming to line up and measure each piece to that it was even, it came out pretty well. Thank goodness for my drill and cordless screwdriver. It was all good to go until we went to set it into place. I hadn't accounted for a little quarter inch bump out at the corners of the bed, where the side rails meet up with the frame. Ahhh! So we took it off and trimmed down the runners with a hand saw until it fit.
Success finally! This had been on my to-do list for a few months now and I'm so glad it's out of the way. The new runners also made a nice clean line for our new bed skirt.
Also on the theme of things you can't see...drum roll please...we now have wireless internet! After many attempts, and a few calls to tech support both at Time Warner and the router company Dave got everything going. Hooray!
The weekend's biggest project was in the kitchen trying to repair all the damage to the walls from the previous 3+ layers of wallpaper and various shoddy repairs in between. You'd think this house is 100 years old, not 30, from the terrible shape of these walls. We are thinking that at some point the walls, or possibly the cupboards were painted blue. We found bits of blue paint in a few places that have us scratching our heads. After lots of careful scraping, sanding and spackling, the walls are nearly ready to be primed. I'm hoping that we've done enough to make them nice and smooth. It's hard to tell right now as everything is shades of various shades of white. It feels smooth, I just hope it looks that way once we get some paint on it.
Before and after of a tear in the drywall.
And a final view after we cleaned up all the dust and debris. All of this took much longer than we imagined. Our goals changed as the hours passed by. We went from getting excited to see the paint on the walls to praying that we'd be able to even get them primed. Well that didn't happen, but it does look much, much better already. Just a few more hours of prep and we'll be able to prime and paint. I can't wait to see that!
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