The day was quite interesting. Four young men arrived to remove the rental furniture and bring in the goods! The kids camped out in the front window to watch all the fun while staying out of the way.
All of the men were extremely polite (like just about everyone else in Britain) and they were very careful with all of our boxes. There were several memorable quotes of the day.
#1 - "You must have had a massive kitchen in the States," says the crew leader after dragging in the kitchen boxes.
The funny thing is that we did not have a massive kitchen. I was just quite creative in my space usage. I'm finding that coat closet we turned into a pantry at The 407 was key to my kitchen organization. I'll spare you a photo of the equally crowded table behind me.
As more and more boxes piled in with a basement or storage room label, they ended up in the conservatory (sun room).
#2 - "Your mattress is not going to fit up to the top floor."
That wasn't the only thing; our dresser would not fit either. Both pieces of furniture were at a proper height to fit into the stairwell, but when the guys needed to lift it up to the next step, they needed about five more inches to clear the ceiling. The geometry did not lie. No way, no how were they making it up to our room on the top floor. The dresser made it up one floor and settled in Youngest Kiddo's room. Lucky kid now has a pretty nice dresser. Our headboard, footboard, nightstands & mirror easily traveled up the second set of stairs to our room. Initially we thought about having the movers take our bedroom furniture back to their warehouse to store for the duration of our time in England since the main storage piece wasn't a part of the deal. The figures came in that we'd have to pay £200 ($327) for transportation back to the warehouse, £70 ($115) a month for storage, and £40 ($65) a month to insure our furniture. Once we did the math and figured out the cost for almost two years of storage would be around $4,000 we decided to save that money and creatively solve the problem in house. Where is the box spring now, you ask? Don't even think of becoming jealous. I'm sure you'll see this new idea in next month's Better Homes & Gardens.
For the short term, that's a big old American box spring in my entryway. You'd think an easy fix is to buy a split queen box spring. That would be easy in America, but not in England. They have divans (dih-van) instead of box springs.
It is a huge box on wheels. Some have drawers and some do not. They are an all round toe stubber. When we had our rental furniture I appreciated that they were on wheels so vacuuming was simple. Trusty old IKEA has divans that are not on wheels, and if we can make the measurements work we will order up a split divan to use underneath our American mattress. As for the box spring in the entryway? It might go up for sale, or broken down for a nice fire. We will see.
More photos and updates to come once we come up for air after an unpacking marathon this weekend. For now Matt and I are camping in our bedroom with the mattress on the floor. The kids are enjoying the toy disasters in their rooms. I'm happy to have a home.
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