Rug of Contention

The mattresses have arrived, more boxes have been unpacked, and the apartment is coming together. Anthony takes apart the IKEA daybed G has been using, and I haul it piece by piece up two flights of stairs to my neighbor's house for her 3 year old. Before we put up the bunk bed, I want to lay down the large pink Pottery Barn rug that we brought from San Francisco. We brought no other furniture or rugs -- just this one thing, since I thought it would be nice for the girls bedroom to have echoes of their lovely bedroom in San Francisco.

But the rug. Oh, the rug. It's a big one -- 8x10 -- and therefore barely fits into the girls' new bedroom. The only way it will fit is if we slide it under the very large, very heavy armoire in the corner. "Slide" is a euphamistic term here, since the floor already has a not-so-clean and not-so-beautiful wall-to-wall beige carpet, which I am detemined to cover. So rather than go with either of Anthony's plans: plan a) throw the rug out or plan b) cut a corner out of the rug and lay it around the armoire, we -- and by we, I mean "I" -- decide to go with plan c) make Anthony repeatedly pick up the heavy armoire by himself, while I try to feed the pink rug underneath.

The armoire is also IKEA, which means that with all the repeated lifting and tipping, it loses it's 90 degree angles. Not only is it no longer square, it is also not stable and we cannot put clothes in the closet or drawers. We finally get the carpet mostly where we want it, then at night Anthony re-works the Leaning Tower of Armoires to re-square it. This works perfectly (he's a genius!), except that the process somehow mysteriously pushes the carpet over to one side, so that it is now curled up at the corner and creeping up the wall. Anthony assembles the bunk bed, but even the weight of this on the far corner is not enough to keep the rug from bubbling, bulging, and squishing wall-ward.

Approximately every other day, I go in when nobody's home and try to shove down the climbing rug and work its bubbles out. I lift the corner of the bunk bed and stretch it taut. But the one thing I do not do is ask Anthony to help me. I am afraid that if I complain about the pink rug or, worse yet, have him help out with the pink rug, he will divorce me. At the very least, I would expect to see a big armoire-sized chunk cut out of it.

But just look at what a difference it makes in the room!

Before:

After:

And for reference: their room in San Francisco: