boom boom in the bedroom

This post has been rated PG: Parental Guidence Suggested. Some material may not be suited for children.

It all started when we moved into the house and bought a king size bed.

It wasn't long after that before we realized that we needed more bedding than we already owned. Fortunately for us, we had been given a boatload of pillows as wedding presents. Ta-da. So we bought two pillow shams to kindof match the comforter. Except we realized that two pillows looked lost on the bed; we neeed three to go across the headboard. When we returned to the department store to purchase the third sham, we noticed how nice the fake beds looked with Euro Shams.

Off to another discount department store to purchase these fancy square pillows at rock-bottom prices. It was successful, but these three euro pillows have lived in the spare closet for three months because we've had problems finding the shams to cover them. Oh, we've found some that we liked, but we're just not willing to pay $100 for one pillowcase.

We're crazy like that.

The other problem was that we couldn't find a color that we liked. This would have all been remedied if we had purchased a bed set from a department store, but we're too cheap to do that. We found a green faux down comforter on a crazy sale, and went from there to find the shams (in a springy plaid) on sale, too. Once we decided to have an adult bed with pillows and such I asked for special permission to bring in a little pink into the bedroom. The Hater agreed to make me happy, and after I explained that the pink would only peek out behind the plaid shams that he picked out.

The problem is that most of the things this spring and this summer was based in pink with brown shams, and I wanted pink shams. I was hoping that this fall (when the browns came back into style) I would be able to find these pink shams... and that we wouldn't have to pay beaucoup for them.

Everytime we go to the mall I walk through the department store bedding section. I've even enlisted the helpful eye of our best friends to widen the search. I had just about decided that I would have to come up with something else. Until Monday, when my friend called to tell me she saw dusty pink euro shams at a certain supercenter for $10 a pop.

The Hater and I were out picking up laundry, so we swung by and found exactly what we were looking for... and while we were there I picked up a red king-size fitted sheet, too. I wanted to cover the box springs, which peek out between the mattress and the bed frame.

Some day we're going to have a put-together house, including a bedroom that looks like it could be in the penny-pincher Pottery Barn. Our plans were to turn the mattress this weekend, so we thought we'd do it up then.

And what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? (This is where the story gets good.)

Last night (at about 3:30am) the new bed BROKE. Two of the three slats that held up the boxsprigs broke over the center brace.* The boxsprings and mattress fell to the floor and we fell with it, waking up violently from sweet sleep. We rolled out of bed and quickly realized what had happened.

We wandered into the second bedroom and made that bed so that we could go to sleep again. We'd only laid there about a minute before we decided we should probably go pull the mattress and box springs up out of the floor because we didn't want the weight to break the bed frame, too. It was a comedy of errors because neither of us were awake and the foam mattress was heavy as a mug.

When we were finally ready to go back to sleep again the cat, who at this point had been running in circles around the house, wanted us to know that she was not a fan of all of these noisy shenannigans. She hollered and cried for the next two hours, unconsolable, pitiful, and certainly unhappy that her hiding place had been revealed. (If she had been under the bed when we fell, this would have been an entirely different post.) She stopped crying and went back to crazy-circle-running after our alarm went off.

So this morning at about 6:15 I called home to seek advice from Mom and Dad before I had to go to work. I was measuring the length of 1"x3"s that we'd need to put Humpty Dumpty back together. We had thought we'd get two (8") braces to support each board instead of just one because it was the one center brace that the boards split over. It made total sense to us, even if it was an overkill.

After work this evening The Hater returned to the house with new slats and braces. ($35 from the chain hardware store) We spent the next hour and a half drilling holes, screwing scews**, and reinventing the wheel. We now have 6 double-supported slats under the bed.

This was a fantastic opportunity to go ahead and put the red fitted sheet over the newly braced boxsprings. It looks really good, and once the sheets get out of the dryer we'll know exactly how thrifty chic our bedroom has become.

But I am a little nervous about going to bed tonight.

* "Boom! Boom!" was the sounds that woke us up as each slat broke and we fell to the floor.
** An electric screwdriver is now on our Parkes Peanut list. Pass the word.