I take P-Doug to bed

Oh, yeah, I also forgot to mention my adventure with P-Doug, fixing my broken box frame. This one's kind of fun. :) No, not that way. Listen...

I have a computer beside my bed... yes, I know how sad that sounds... and I'm in the habit of sitting on the right side of my bed (queen size; no obviously jokes, please), surfing and working and pirat— errrr, backing up my collection on it (yeah, that's it). Anyway, one afternoon last summer, that corner just separated, and BANG!!! dropped, about 18", and hit the floor, with me on it. Shit! There was nothing I could do but prop it up on books.

I didn't really know what to do about it, so it's been that way ever since. Till a couple of weekends ago. I know P-Doug's had a fair amount of building experience... he's one of these guys from up north, so what else was there to do growing up? So I knew he'd be the one to know better ways to go about fixing it than I'd come up with. That was sure true. He suggested not just fixing that corner, which would have been my plan, but strengthening all four corners. He pointed out that the screws hadn't pulled out, they'd sheared off at the base of the thread. They were only 1/8" thick, four to each post. So on each corner, a half an inch of cheap steel was all that was holding up the frame, the box spring, the mattress, and me, with a weight that's varied from a high of 310 lbs, to a low of 185 lbs, and a current weight of 205.

We went out to Home Depot down at Ellesmere and Warden — the worst intersection in the city — and bought some 1/4" thick screws. We drilled new holes and put the screws in. Problem was, the 1/4" screws had heads too big to countersink properly. We couldn't get the frame back together. Luckily, we only did one post before trying the connection. So we knew we needed other screws. This time we went over to the new Canadian Tire store on Sheppard, just up the street. We got 3/16" width screws with the right countersink size. It took us ages, though, to find screwdrivers and the right sized bits for using my drill as a power screwdriver. We did finally manage it, and drilled new holes. This time, it all came together pretty quickly; probably 15-20 minutes for the whole job. The screws are longer, thicker (ahem), and new, and the bed's pretty sturdy. I think it will be a few more years before it's unsound again. Sure is nice.