Saturday, February 11, 2006

The bookcase adventure

Here is the story. When my husband and I were first married we got a great old apartment in a historic neighborhood. There was only 6 apts. in the building and we were surrounded my neat, giant old houses. It was a nice place to live. Every night we tried to take a long walk for our health, time to chat, and to unwind from some not so fun days. One night we walking and there was a dumpster on the street. It was in front of a house having renovations done. We, of course, climbed up to peak in to see if there was any goodies to be had. That's when we saw this giant 6 ft. tall X 6 ft. wide bookcase. It was dark out so we figured it must be in terrible shape or something. We climbed down and thought about it. Thought about how the heck would we pull this thing up and out and carry it home. Hubby climbed in and we somehow hoisted that sucker out. We then started carrying it. We waddled a few steps and sat it down over and over. We were laughing at what idiots we must look like and wondering if this was illegal or wrong. Was someone going to come running & yelling at us? An apt. neighbor of ours came driving by and we hid behind the bookcase. Nothing suspicious here, just an enormous bookcase sitting on the sidewalk at night. She stopped her car and stared at it. She wanted it, I know she did and she had a truck!

We were laughing like goofy teenagers. She drove on. We huffed and carried on. Eventually, we made it to our apt. Now how to get this thing up the curvy stairwell and into our 2nd floor apt? We just sat there wondering. Then, another neighbor came home and stood at the door with us going, "what the ?" He laughed and said he'd help us try to move it. He was a big, strong dude. We are short, little, not strong people. We all pushed it up one flight and it got jammed in between the stairs and the ceiling. It was stuck up on its side. perfect.

We pushed and shoved and took out much plaster on the ceiling and finally got it up to our apt. We cleaned it up and painted it (making sure to scratch off the serial number in the process-kidding, only kidding). We were thrilled with our find until two years later it was time to move into our house. AHHHHH!

3 Comments:

Blogger laura capello said...

That bookcase is SO WORTH all that effort. I'm in deep, deep bookcase envy right now...

6:09 PM  
Blogger Meegan Blue said...

Excellent story! Can you even believe that some silly renovator put it out there in the first place? I don't know about where you are, but here in Portland that thing could be sold for a high price at many places around town. Score for you guys! It's beautiful...

6:33 PM  
Blogger colorfool said...

Thank you both. We still can't believe we got it out of a dumpster. It's solid wood so I'm sure it would cost way more than we would've been able to pay. Thank you again.

3:13 PM  

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