The one where Chickenlady and PJM make the bed
Madame Poulet and I have been shacked up together for a while now. We quickly decided that we’d need a new bed so we sloped off to the nearest Ikea where a cunning plan began to form.

Chez Chickenlady isn’t exactly palatial and our bedroom is somewhat limited in storage space. As we ambled in between the Itskräp bedroom furniture and Fvännibattør wardrobe units, the solution to our space conundrum presented itself before us. A loft bed.

The loft bed in the shop was suspended upon six feet high wooden legs and if our measurements were correct, Chickenlady’s office desk would fit snugly underneath allowing plenty of room for her to work and to store a multitude of clothes, books and Lulu Guinness handbags with enough spare space for all of my guff too.

The next morning, in order to make way for the construction of our new bed, I attempted to manoeuvre the large desk out of the way of the bedroom door.

*Smack!* “You twat!”

I'd managed to smack my forehead on a protruding corner of the unit. If I’m completely honest, I’m a bit of a beadlehands and have no co-ordination whatsoever, so me doing any DIY in a combined space is really a recipe for an imminent visit to A&E. I had to sit quietly for a few minutes before the dizziness subsided.

Once she had finished sniggering, Chickenlady appeared with freshly made coffee and the assembly instructions. I also appropriated a bicycle multi-tool, a screwdriver and a sturdy rubber mallet from my toolbox and we set about building the frame of the bed. Actually, if I can be honest once again, I usually pretty much disregard assembly instructions per se. I mean, they’re really only advisory aren’t they?

“It quite obviously states that you need to assemble this section first” exclaimed a bemused Chickenlady, as she pointed at the piece of paper in her hand.

“Nonsense, these instructions are really only advisory aren’t they?”

With that I continued to bolt the lengths of wood together until I realised that two semi-built sections would require some kind of assertive persuasion in order to be able to fit together.

“Pass that mallet here Chickenlady, I know what I’m doing. Here, you hold this end”

*thump*
*thump*
*squish*

Whatever I’d just hit with the mallet didn’t feel much like solid pine. I glanced at Chickenlady’s rapidly watering eyes and realised the magnitude of my error. Her thumb was already beginning to redden and swell.

“Give. Me. The. Fucking. Mallet, PJM”

I decided to make us more coffee. I ducked past the semi-assembled frame and tried to negotiate the large desk.

*Smack!* “Ouch, bollocks. Not again…”

Twenty minutes later and now sporting a sizeable bruise on my forehead, I reappeared to find that Chickenlady had made admirable progress building the bed. It dawned on me that she might actually be better at this DIY malarkey than me, which is something I had never considered before.

“Look, I’ve got it covered here. Why don’t you go out for a couple of hours on your bike or something?” she said, gently.

“But I really can do this, I’ve built loads of furniture before” I implored.

Chickenlady held up her angry looking swollen thumb and frowned, which told me all I needed to know.

Two hours later, I returned to the house to find the frame almost built. She really had done an amazing job. It was five-thirty in the afternoon and just beginning to darken outside. All we needed to do was to install the slats, shove the mattress in place and we’d be ready to sleep like royalty.

I always like to take a belt and braces approach to any engineering task, so I found some brass wood screws in the garage and pressed these into action. Those slats were never going to go anywhere, even if it took me three more hours to fit the damn things.

At half past eight the bed was complete. The next job was to bring the mattress upstairs and drop it into place. It wasn’t going to be easy, for it was king sized and must have weighed the best part of two hundred pounds. Trying to fold it around a narrow, winding staircase with a low ceiling was hard work.

After another hour of heaving, swearing and contortion, we had bullied the mattress into place. With that, we dragged the large wooden desk under the bed, noting that there was two inches clearance. Feeling triumphant, we refilled the shelves of the desk with books. Anyone who knows Chickenlady also knows that she has a lot of books. An hour later, we’d refitted the bedroom accordingly and were marvelling at the amount of space at our disposal.

“I suppose we’d better try this out then. Go on, you first”.
Chickenlady gestured towards the ladder, upon which I ascended. I crawled onto the mattress and lay on my back. Something wasn’t quite right. I hoped for a moment that she wouldn’t notice.

“My nose is three inches away from the ceiling” she sighed.

She had a point. Even Houdini would have found it claustrophobic. We spent another hour retrieving everything from under the bed and moving it back out onto the landing. Again. Trusted with an angry looking De Walt power saw, I hacked away at a hastily measured eighteen inches height, whilst bent double under the bed with inadequate lighting while Chickenlady and her mum supported the weight of the bed on their shoulders as the room rapidly filled with sawdust and noise.

Finally, the four semi amputated legs were kicked away and the bed ended up an acceptable distance from the ceiling. By some miracle, all of the legs were the correct length and the bed itself was perfectly flat. Unfortunately, the desk would now never fit underneath the bed and the idea of an office there would only prove feasible if the chickeny one were a rather petite Hobbit. We were too tired to care at this point so we vacuumed the floor, made the bed and were finally asleep by twenty to two in the morning, fourteen hours after we started.

Epilogue

Since then, we’ve had several more items of self assembly furniture delivered to the house, nearly all of which have been completely assembled by the time I get home from work. I’ve been anxious to re-establish my DIY credentials since then, so I fixed a rail across the underside of the bed so that the lovely Chickenlady can hang her multitude of clothes out of the way. It worked well for a few months, until it decided to give way in the middle of the night, dumping suits, dresses and jackets unceremoniously on the floor.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 24 Jun 2011, 17:06, 13 replies)

Is it you blatant failure to measure the room,
your utter failure to assemble the bed, or the belief that you really do refer to each other by your b3ta usernames, that is making me laugh?

Who cares?
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 24 Jun 2011, 19:25, closed)

It must be a b3ta couple thing.
I never get my real name anymore, I'm always DG with the missus.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Sat 25 Jun 2011, 15:03, closed)

it's ikea furniture
surely all you needed was a set of allen keys
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 24 Jun 2011, 19:43, closed)

Needs more gaffer tape
that'll sort ya.
( Funkenschlag still likes dogs more than cats, Fri 24 Jun 2011, 20:27, closed)

A couple of suggestions to help ease you thru this quagmire of life.
RTFM & measure twice, cut once.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Fri 24 Jun 2011, 23:37, closed)

Exactly
Sage words from the Marcus Garvey's pilot.

My dad told me first, but I like to think I got the advice from a Rastafarian space tug captain.
( Scrumper, Fri 24 Jun 2011, 23:48, closed)

Ooh!
A William Gibson reference!
Plus a click because, having met PJM and Chickenlady, I can easily imagine the disapproving look she gave him -it would probably have meltad steel!
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Sat 25 Jun 2011, 9:08, closed)

Click
Mainly for "beadlehands"
( Peej, Sat 25 Jun 2011, 20:24, closed)

Hoya!

This one is absolutely fantastic!

I reckon you could turn it into some sort of funny episode of Friends or Mr Bean!!!

Be funky

M A D
(MAD Life -The Best Antidote To Happiness, Sat 25 Jun 2011, 21:08, closed)

Lived it
Rings so true in every detail from the DeWalt to the Epilogue. Most telling is the casual insertion of the word "miracle."

One could almost say, "Yeah. Been there. Done that."

Soundtrack (pearoast):
youtu.be/Bvz0iLY3Nlw
( Squilliam but . . . . *I'm* the one with all the talent!, Sun 26 Jun 2011, 1:04, closed)

A short Version
I lezzed it up

I'm an idiot

I'm boring

but I lezzed it up

And I kept my neighbours up at 2 in the morning using a power tool - for cutting (not lezzing it up)
(Clit Ninja is having a white space party!, Mon 27 Jun 2011, 13:59, closed)

Even shorter response.
Fuck off.
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Wed 29 Jun 2011, 12:04, closed)

Haha, magnificent!

( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Wed 29 Jun 2011, 12:04, closed)