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Furniture Curse

For nearly seven years, Dave and I lived in a two-room apartment. It had a bedroom and an "other" room, which was our kitchen, dining room, living room and office. All told, the two rooms totaled about 400 square feet. Not too unusual for San Francisco.

So when, in May, we moved into a spacious two-bedroom apartment with a living room and dining room, we found ourselves with a lot of space to fill. We owned a battered futon, a cheap kitchen table and chairs, some bookshelves and a few odds and ends. All college leftovers. We needed furniture.

We immediately bought a sofa. It didn't fit through the steep, narrow, curving staircase up to our second-story front door -- not even close. But no sweat; the delivery guys opened our large front window, propped one end up of the sofa up on the ledge, and pulled the sofa up into the living room in less than two minutes.

Then we ordered a large wooden bookcase with glass doors. Those delivery guys didn't even want to try squeezing it through the stairwell, even though it looked like it might fit. When we finally coaxed them to try, it was an inch too tall to clear the low ceiling over the steep stairs. And they refused to try hoisting it up through the front window (which is over the garage, probably a 10-foot lift). It was really heavy.

We had them leave the bookcase, still wrapped in plastic, in our garage (garage! in San Francisco!) while we figured out a way to get it up to and through the window -- rent a forklift? a cherry picker? hire piano movers to install a big pulley on our roof and tow the sucker up? Every man who saw the thing in our garage had an idea of how to get it in. Easy. Build a giant ramp. Get it onto the back of a flatbed truck and raise it a foot at a time by stacking blocks under it.

In the end, though, it was going to cost almost as much as the thing cost itself to get the bookcase inside the apartment and then, whenever we move again, to get it out. Defeated, we sent it back.

Three weeks ago I ordered a small sliding-door cabinet to hold our wine glasses in the dining room. The delivery was scheduled for today. Dave just called me at work and said, "I'm afraid I have bad news." The cabinet arrived badly damaged. He had to refuse delivery. This is after Dave completely rearranged his work day so he'd be home to accept the delivery. And the delivery truck came nearly two hours later than scheduled.

I'm wondering what's next. The dining room table is arriving in two weeks and we specifically requested that it be delivered with the legs detached.

It could have been worse. I'm thanking my lucky stars we moved into the second-story apartment and not the third.

August 11, 2005 5:09 PM