A few notes on moving to Europe.Note #1 - Measure all the doorways of your European house or apartment *before* shipping your bed over. Doorways and stairways are smaller here, so are European beds. European beds are lower to the ground, higher than a futon, though. Often times double beds are 2 twins put together. Our "big American bed" could not make the journey upstairs to our bedroom - well, not all of our bed. The box spring now resides in our basement (referred to as a cave here in Luxembourg. maybe all of Europe?) The mattress made it. Often times furniture items can be hoisted through an upstairs window. Not in our case, though as the windows are too small (or the bed is too big?) I was told the story of a man (American of course) whose bed was soo big (how big was it?) it had to be crane lifted through his upstairs window. Our bed is not at all huge by American standards. It is a queen size with a pillow top mattress. Now we need to buy a frame. We're feeling very lucky that we don't need to buy a mattress as well.
Note #2 - Put together a box with one set of bedding for each bed, label it "first night bedding." Add this to your shipment. This would have made getting the beds made much easier. We had multiple boxes labeled linens or bedding so it required quite a bit of digging to get the beds made.
More notes to come!
8 comments:
We had this happen with our American Bed in our 1960's American Townhome. We had to buy a split queen box spring in order to use our bed. So know you aren't alone.
Our large (queen size) French bed wouldn't go up the stairs either so we sawed it in half and installed it again in the bedroom with brackets - it held up for over 10 years!
Also, be careful about putting plastic wrapped things in the cave, which can be very humid - you might be unpleasantly surprised when you open it again.
Good luck unpacking.
E
We had an attic bedroom we couldn't get it up the stairs, and my husband cut the box spring in half with his saw, folded the box spring up, carried it up the stairs (with help) then he bought a few new 1x2s and replaced the ones he cut in half, screwing them in... the box spring was a little less supportive but it saved us a lot of money and we did it in one afternoon.
I'm loving your updates and hearing about your new life in another country. Sorry the boxspring doesn't fit - Good luck with the rest of the unpacking!!
Live and learn!
Can I ask if you've found a frame? I've had my US mattress and boxspring on the floor since arriving in Belgium several years ago, but would finally like to buy a frame. I know I'll have to give up the boxspring, but I'm afraid the 203cm long mattress won't squoosh into a frame sized for a 200cm long EU mattress. I hear different things from different salespeople, and I'm reluctant to buy first and say "uh oh" later!
Hi Kelly,
We found our frame (just on Saturday) at Conforma on the rue de Arlon. You are right, the matress sizes do not match the frame sizes. We opted to buy the bigger frame. It turned out to be about 2ish inches wider on EACH side (4-5 inches total)but fit perfectly in length. When pricing and deciding, remember you have to buy a wooden slat thing to fit into the frame. I guess it's like the European version of a box spring. It was 150 euros. Not cheap on top of a frame. We're sort of in the stage of "everything is more of a hassle and more expensive" than we ever anticipated right now. And, guess what?? we could barely get that wooded slat thing up our stairs. I'M NOT KIDDING. We basically forced it through, leaving bumps and dings on the walls and stairs.
Have you considered those twin "box springs with legs?" instead of a frame? I don't know what they're called. It seems like you could just put your mattress on top. I saw them at IKEA. My husband wanted a frame.
Best of luck to you -
Katy
Oh, thanks, Katy - much appreciated! So you got a 160x200 frame? I knew those would be a bit too wide, but I just wanted to be sure the mattress would fit lengthwise. Phew!
I thought about the box springs on legs, but I would like at least a headboard - something to lean back against as we read would be nice.
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