It all started when our daughter and her family bought a cottage. At least that is what they call it. It looks more like a nice second home. It is in an area of Wisconsin that has a lot of fun things for families to do and will be used often. It has four bedrooms so they needed to get some beds set up. Between everyone in the family, it won't be hard to furnish. We had a bedroom set up with two twin beds pushed together to look like a king size bed. We decided to give them those twin beds, get ourselves a new king size bed and put our old king size mattress and box springs in the lower level where the twin beds were. Sounds easy enough, right? WRONG!
The first part was pretty easy getting our bed set up and getting the twin beds out of the way. Then the trouble began. We thought we could just carry the mattress downstairs. It was so heavy, floppy and just awkward but it had to go down only 14 steps with a landing, so we thought it could be slid down. We got to the landing where the stair turns, and we couldn't get it any further. It was stuck and wouldn't fit. This is so contrary to how my husband operates. He usually figures and measures and measures again. This time we just went for it, and it bit us in the butt. So much for being spontaneous. The next part of the adventure took over an hour. We had to get it back up the steps to where we started. We pushed and pulled until we were both exhausted, but we finally managed to get it back upstairs. Sorry, there aren't any photos of this phase. There was a lot of grunting and groaning but no time for pictures.
I had enough and thought we should call in the young people, but my husband thought he had a good plan this time. He got out his green garden wagon.
We were going to take the mattress out the front door and take it around the house to a set of exterior steps we have on the marsh side of the house. Then take it down the steps to a patio door, into the house, down the hall and into the bedroom. I guess it sounded easy enough.
We managed to wrestle the mattress outside and got it on the wagon which was reinforced with some boards. My husband strapped the mattress down so it wouldn't slip off.
He started pulling the wagon and it really pulled quite nicely. The strapping stayed put so nothing slipped along the way. Maybe this would work after all.
Next came a little maneuvering between the birdfeeders and some bushes, but here we were at the top of the steps.
Now it was time to back the wagon down the steps without it falling off the edge and without ripping the mattress on the cement wall. I stood at the bottom slowly guiding it down. It went well until we got to a post that was holding up the deck. The mattress wouldn't fit through. The straps had to come off, and we had to maneuver it around the post and then carry it to the patio door.
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| Fortunately we had our handy dandy little orange straps. |
These little gems are supposed to make lifting heavy items a breeze. Notice the couple on the box lifting a mattress. They either had straps that were twice as long as ours or they had eight foot arms. We did manage to finally maneuver it in place.
The next time this mattress gets moved it won't be by us. Our days of moving king size mattresses are over. It did prove we are in better shape than we thought we were.
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