It's Curtains for Paws Awhile

If we're going to ask people to sleep on the new sofa-bed, we probably need to provide them with a little privacy, especially since our balcony is right beside the door where the neighbor comes out to smoke.

I went out shopping for some curtains to cover the sliding glass doors but came home empty handed. On the way back to the condo we stopped by our friend's house. She was taking down some curtains that she didn't need anymore.  She offered them to me.  I didn't think they were wide enough for the sliding glass doors, but I took them anyway.  They were the kind that have the 3 pleats at the top, and as suspected, they were too narrow.  But, if I undid the pleats and added some grommets, I decided that they would cover the space nicely.

The fabric at the top of the curtains was too thick though and the grommets would not close around it so I had to trim some of the excess fabric.

The grommet package had a template for cutting the holes in the top of the curtains.

I marked and cut the holes, pinning the fabric around the template so that I could cut all of the layers evenly.

 I had trouble getting the grommets to snap together until I figured out that I needed to apply even pressure to the entire ring.  This was accomplished using a wooden coaster.

I had to do some math to space the grommets out correctly. Once I got all of the grommets installed, it was time to mount the curtain rod.  I used a handy-dandy battery operated level thingy that I found in the junk box to make sure I got it level.

I hung the curtains and stood back to admire my handy-work!

Now our sofa-sleeping guests will have some privacy...

...but they'll have to get up early because these are not room-darkening curtains.

Oh well, I guess beggars can't be choosers!

Sofa So Far

Paws Awhile is petite (~800 square feet), therefore it was dwarfed by the giant sofa that came with the unit.

We needed a smaller sofa to make the space seem larger.  We wanted a sleeper sofa in case our number of guests exceeded the capacity of the sleeping surfaces. We searched high and low for just the right sofa at just the right price.  You may remember from a previous post that I found one locally in Fernandina Beach for $2500 which was out of my price range.

Jennifer Convertibles in Virginia had almost the identical sofa for $399.99.

The drawback is that Jennifer would not ship to Fernandina Beach or even Atlanta.  They wouldn't even let us order the sofa over the phone, so...  ROAD TRIP!!!

We took a Saturnday morning flight to Washington, DC and took their marvelous public transportation to the Jennifer Convertibles store in Bailey's Crossroads, Virginia. We bought the sofa and scheduled a date to pick it up at their warehouse.  The warehouse was only open for pick-ups on Tuesdays after 1PM.

We looked into options for transporting the sofa and found most options to be too costly so we finally settled on renting an Alamo minivan.  Apparently Alamo was interested in moving some minivans to Florida for the winter because our rate was $38/day with no drop charge!  We weren't sure whether the sofa would fit, but with fingers crossed, we flew back to DCA on Tuesday and picked up our minivan. We folded down all of the seats in the Alamo parking lot and decided our plan was going to work.

We got to the warehouse early but they wouldn't give us the sofa so we had lunch at a nearby Wendy's and went back at 1PM on the dot.  The sofa fit perfectly in the back of the van.  It looked a little like a coffin back there.

The 10 hour drive was pretty uneventful. We listened to a book and before we knew it, we were pulling into Sand Dollar Villas just before midnight.  Then came the challenge of getting the sofa up to our unit. We were very thankful that our complex has an elevator. I don't think we could have carried it up the stairs.  Sliding the box worked well!  We deposited the sofa just inside the door and went to bed.  

After checking flights, we had decided that if we wanted to get home the next day, we would need to be on the 5:30AM flight, meaning a 3:45AM wake up call.

A few weeks later, I flew back down to unbox and assemble the sofa. I'm guessing if we had bought the $2500 sofa it would have been delivered, assembled and set up. 

There were great instructions in the box though, so I got it assembled pretty quickly.

Now we are ready for guests!  (Tony says we would only put people we don't like on the sofa-bed, but we had this same sofa-bed in our motorhome and WE slept on it.)

The sofa is even comfortable to curl up on for an afternoon nap!

We thought we would have to recruit our friend with a truck to haul the old sofa off, but we found that we could schedule a pick up from the local charity, Barnabas.

The sofa only came in two colors, neither of them very beachy, so I bought some Tommy Bahama fabric and started the re-upholstery job.  

I have only gotten the cushions covered so far, but I am really liking the look! The fabric is indoor-outdoor so hopefully it will resist stains from suntan lotion, dog drool and the like!

That's it for the so far sofa... so far...  stay tuned!