New Bed New Woman

RantWoman recently used part of her stimulus payment to buy a new queen size bed on Amazon. This post is the story of the delivery and unpacking.

Friday instead of Monday

Two Amazon
delivery boxes

 RantWoman could have paid another 50% above the price of the platform to have control over the delivery timing. RantWoman opted not to. 

First RantWoman received a date range on ordering. 

Then RantWoman received a text promising on Monday. RantWoman's phone is having trouble with links in text messages. RantWoman suspects either something wrong physically with her phone that is interfering with vibrate on touch or the latest update of Talkback. No, RantWoman has not done further troubleshooting.

On Friday there was a knock on RantWoman's door. The box had been left outside a neighbor's door two hallways down.

The box weighs 86 pounds. Luckily it slid nicely as RantWoman pushed.

RantWoman did not document the platform unpacking and setup on Monday. That involved a large kitchen knife, spatial reasoning, careful attention to leverage, some guess by touch about what needed to happen to stand it up and stabilize it. RantWoman spent a certain amount of time fretting "Oh, no, I should have asked for or paid for help. RantWoman felt very butch when she figured it out all by herself.

Caution about setting up the platform base: the base is advertised as having a weight capacity several times RantWoman's weight. The platform has 12 legs. Once RantWoman sliced open a whole side of the box, the frame slid out easily. The plastic wrapping came off easily and the two zip tie and plastic foam stops in the center joints also snipped off with no difficulty. Likewise the legs unfolded smoothly.  It looks solidly framed throughout but getting the built-in bracing right is probably critical and the instructions in the box are not helpful for one key point, the corner braces.

The diagram with the directions is helpful about finding two braces across the center divide. RantWoman had to smoosh a little to make sure the braces reached across to the wingnuts. Once the connection happened it was easy to screw the wingnuts down and hold the braces in place.

The corner braces were trickier. The diagram in the directions was less than helpful other than as an alert to look for them. Each brace needed to be moved across a corner where again there was a screw and a wingnut. RantWoman had a really hard time getting the braces into place so that wingnut could be screwed down solidly. RantWoman finds this a little alarming. If a large person sits on the edge of the bed wrong, the bracing could fail. RantWoman is pretty confident she got things screwed together solidly. Nevertheless RantWoman is glad the framing includes a bar along the floor and RantWoman happens to have a large concrete block she slid behind the bar under the center of the bed on the side facing the room where RantWoman is likely to sit for instance while putting socks on.

There was the small matter of the Monday afternoon timeline for the mattress delivery. PLENTY of time over the weekend to procrastinate, but Monday RantWoman bolted out of be and set about moving the old bed out to the hallway (Urk. Haul away?), swept a giant pile of hair up where the old bed used to be, rearranged a number of things in the bedroom, scrubbed the floor and set about the setup activities described above.

As the mattress arrival window drew near, RantWoman fretted: which entry will them come to? RantWoman missed a call saying the truck had arrived. RantWoman finds it annoying to call back the number than just rang and get a robot voice from Amazon Logistics saying " we're sorry we miss..." or some such thing. RantWoman checked one entry and then the other. RantWoman should have written notes in the delivery instructions.

For one thing, RantWoman has the kind of vision loss that means she might not see even a large Amazon delivery truck until she is quite near. Luckily RantWoman heard the delivery guys saying something about mattress delivery.

Monday, in the elevator

Does this box look like a mattress?

To say the least, RantWoman was A LITTLE skeptical.

Box delivered to room as ordered

As much delivery and setup
as RantWoman paid for.

Delivery guy courteously dropped the box on the platform and fled, after promising that the mattress would fully inflate within 24 hours.

RantWoman decided to roll with it, as in roll the very compressed mattress out of the box, roll it around a couple ways to free the mattress from all it's shipping shell. And onward.

No power tools, but a large kitchen knife

Mattress soon to be free of box,
the knife that helped

Start undoing the plastic

Still not sure it's going to turn into a mattres

Platform frame
mattress still wrapped in plastic

s

It's GROWING

Even before
all the plastic was off

And growing

Mattress in plastic
still unfolding

Fear not.

Getting eaten by some kind of mattress monster seems unlikely.

Oh Look, It is a mattress

Get the mattress fully
aligned with the platform

The implements of unveiling

Mattress
Large kitchen knife
pair of scissors

Another layer of plastic to liberate the mattress from but first we show off the implements of liberation.

ALL that plastic

Mattress fully expanded
with a mountain of plastic wrap
it escaped from

Did RantWoman mention layers

and layers

and layers

and layers

of plastic 

the mattress needed to be liberated from

Ready to rest after all that work

Bed all set up!

The bed was in fact a little squishy the first night, but as promised by the next night it had firmed up nicely.

And RantWoman is sleeping SO much better and waking up with so many fewer cricks and creaks from trying to sleep around the lumps of the old definitely worn out bed.