Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Getting it Upstairs

Before I left UNT, I managed to rope two friends into promising to help me get this cabinet upstairs (thanks Chris and Drew!).
It was of course a mad rush home on Friday after midterms, and I spend the first few days just relaxing a little bit and also brought the cabinet into the garage, letting us avoid airplane wings on the big move-in day. I also worked on something else that I will get to in the next post.
 On Monday, Chris and Drew came over, and so it began. It was pretty much a nightmare trying to get it inside, as it barely fit through every doorway we had to go through. Once we got to the stairs though, is where it got really fun. I was at the top, and Chris and Drew were at the bottom; this was probably not the ideal arrangement in retrospect because Chris and I are close to the same height, and Drew is pretty darn short. Anyway, we managed to get it up to the landing, at which point, we all had the "What in the world are we doing?" moment. Once it was at the landing, we realized that we didn't have enough room to turn it to make the second corner, and nor was the stairway wide enough to take it up sideways. After deliberating for quite some time, we came up with the only possible solution (still haven't thought of a different one), and I wish so much that we had taken some pictures; it was surely a sight to behold! First, we laid they cabinet down on its back, and Drew crawled inside (told you he was small). There is a space in the back near the bottom if you remember, that's where Drew was. Keep in mind that the cabinet is 27.5" wide, and we probably had about 30" if that to work with; the clearances were approximately the same for the length as well. Once Drew was inside, we slowly and carefully proceeded to turn the cabinet upside down. Drew started by lifting it from the inside, since believe it or not, he had the most room at the moment. Once the bottom was a few feet off of the ground, Chris was able to get underneath, Drew got out, and they kept pushing it to upside down. I was on the other side, slowly moving it towards them so it wouldn't hit the wall. Now keep in mind that this cabinet weighs at least 200lbs, and is immensely bulky. Just go back to any picture of it if you need a refresher of the size of this. After this, we were able to maneuver the cabinet somewhat easily, if you discount the whole don't-let-the-top-heavy-200lb-arcade-machine-fall-over-and-destroy-something-and/or-itself factor. Anyways, we maneuvered the cabinet to the rail post, lifted the cabinet over the post and got it in line with the second flight of stairs. After managing to navigate the tight space to get on top to drag it up, we manged to get it up to the floor of my room.Getting it into the room was the easy bit, and and I slid the TV in, just to see kind of how it will look when it is done. Luckily, I did take a picture of that:
I think it looks great even just like that.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Approximately Five Months Overdue

No, I'm not talking about library books...

Anyways, when I came home for spring break, which I believe was late March, I managed to get extremely far along in the project. I should have been posting multiple times throughout the break, but I didn't, so I will be catching you up in several installments.