“Let’s bring the trestle table upstairs and take this one downstairs before the boys get home from youth.”
“But Mom, it’s 8:20. Aren’t they going to be home soon?”
“We have an hour – PLENTY of time!! Think how surprised they will be!”
“You’re serious. Okay. What do we have to do?”
Thus started one of those projects that leaves those around you wondering if you have lost your mind.
We have this beautiful solid wood trestle table that Tim’s Mom & Dad bought when he was a kid. He and his siblings grew up eating at this table. It’s in rough shape right now – but it’s beautiful. It’s SO heavy (I’m guessing it weighs over 150 pounds)! They don’t make them like this anymore! I can’t wait to refinish it…but I digress.
Emily and I headed downstairs with the chairs from the old table as we don’t need them upstairs anymore. Step one done. YEAH! Still had lots of time to get things done.
Next step was to move that big old table out of the family room and up the stairs. No big deal. Until I realized it was too wide for the door frame. And FREAKIN’ heavy. Hm. Now what? Brilliant idea came to mind: Take the top off.
Half an hour later and we had only managed to remove a few screws and discover that years of use had fused the top to the base. We were running out of time.
Plan B – put all the screws back in. Turn the thing on its’ side and slide it through the door at the right angle to get those legs out and around. Okay…Ready? One…Two…Three!!
SUCCESS!! Oh…crap! It was catching in one spot and no amount of maneuvering was going to budge it. And now I’ve ruined Tim’s fantastic trim paint job on that door frame. And we’ve got 5 minutes at the most until the boys were home! Panic was setting in – not enough time to move backwards and not enough time to move forwards (yes, we were STUCK)!
I wish I could have gotten a picture of Tim’s face when he walked in the door and found me at the bottom of the stairs with my end of the table visible. He’d already worked a long day and I am pretty sure he thought there was no way he was getting out of helping with this one, just when he wanted to do nothing but go to bed. Well, the wonderful guy that he is, he did bail us out a little and helped us turn that sucker on its’ end and get it through that one door frame. I sent him on his way after that.
We huffed. We puffed. We pulled and we pushed. We shimmied and we tweaked. We got sweaty. But we managed to get that table up the first flight of stairs to the landing. A few adjustments of position and we started up the second and made quick work of that one. It wasn’t long before we had that table in the kitchen and headed on to the dining room.
1 1/2 hours after we set out to surprise the boys with our table switch, I’d say we were successful! We only had 1 paint mishap (the doorframe downstairs). We didn’t hurt ourselves. And we were pretty quiet. To quote Tim “I’m impressed. You’re being quiet, you aren’t banging up the walls and you aren’t swearing. THAT is impressive!”
I am pretty proud of myself and Emily – we got that table moved with almost zero help from the guys. I had a fun bonding time with my daughter, showed her that she can do more than she thinks she can if she puts her mind to it and accomplished something I have been wanting to do for a while now.
Now I wonder if I can move that china cabinet by myself?
Crazy Love-Filled Life 