Woggy #16: New Bed

Though it's probably a surprise to anyone actually viewing my wog, my original inspiration for this page began after considering my friend's blog The Cranky House, and wondering what sort of topic I might be able to write about myself. Thinking of the absurd number of unfinished home projects I had around here seemed like that might be a funny place to start. In classic woggy style, I have of course done everything but talk about household projects ever since. So, I figured today is as good a day as any to finally mention one of them.

My husband and I have had plans for ages to buy or create some sort of new bed. And by "new bed" what I am actually meaning is really just "a bed", at least in the classic, traditional sense of what most people consider to be a bed.

While I was a bit opposed to it aesthetically, we did, quite immediately after moving in together, go to a mattress warehouse store and purchase the standard and traditional American Queen mattress with matching box spring. This set did come with a FREE! super-basic "bed frame", which is to say a simple but sturdy metal framework with wheels that one could safely place one's mattress and box spring set on top of. Here is a picture of said "frame", collapsed in space-saving fashion in the corner.

For several years we were content to call this basic assortment a bed and a bed frame, and I even bought a nice stylish bed skirt to make it appear a bit less rustic industrial than it actually was. As time wore on and probably somewhere after our actual marriage ceremony, I began to realize that most established couples out there seemed to have one of these complete and inclusive furniture item things that most people mean when they hear the term "bed", and hey, why don't we get one of those too! those look pretty nice!

And so began this woggy project. Due to financial restraints, we originally began looking just for something that would help fill out our current operation into something that looked more like a real bed. A headboard, a less rustic-looking support frame... And we had made some progress in this direction when we were interrupted by an unexpected and life consuming construction project. Our condo building needed to replace all of its exterior wall surfaces, and was going to replace all of the building's windows at the same time. Since 2 walls of our bedroom are almost all windows, and construction required a three-foot clear-out zone for the construction crew, that left our usable bedroom nonexistent, which meant our bed got deconstructed and placed on its side against the wall, ala factory storage style, for the duration of the construction project.

In the month that stretched into months of construction, while we slept on the most rustic bed of all, the floor, we began to discuss and imagine what sort of real, actual bed we might like to sleep on when all this construction business was over. The definitive conclusion we came to was that, neither of us actually wanted a box spring, and we would both like some sort of nice modern and stylish complete bed frame for our mattress to go on. We devised our environmentally responsible plan for freecyling our box spring and metal frame, which we reasoned would probably be a serious score if you were say, just out of college or high school and looking for something to put your beginning-to-sag futon on. Or perhaps someone whose boxspring had met with an unfortunate accident, and was looking for a replacement. We looked at catalogs, talked about bed styles.

Things were really looking good for this woggy project by the time the construction was coming to a close. New windows, new walls, and soon.. a new bed!

Several years later, we are still sitting here with no bed frame, and have actually devolved in that, thinking we would be freecycling our box spring and frame, we only bothered to put the mattress back on the floor, assuming we'd get a frame under it any week now, and leaving the others against the wall would make it so much easier when the freecycler showed up. Months after these assumptions had proven untrue, we did finally put the box spring down and the mattress on that, just "temporarily", until we bought the new frame, of course, which is why we didn't actually put the frame itself back on the floor and the box spring and mattress on top of those. And as, you might have noted from the picture at the top, there it still is, not under our bed!

But, my hope springs eternal. why, just two days ago, we almost went to the store to look at a bed frame. We firmly decided we'd probably go to that store instead next weekend. Maybe! A girl can dream..



Things Left To Complete This Woggy Project:

• go to the store to look at beds
  
• decide on a bed and buy it
  
• put our box spring and frame up on freecycle
  
• give away our stuff to freecyle person
• get our new bed delivered
• say, "Hey, doesn't our new bed look great?!"