What a difference one little foam pad made. Last night the bedroom temp went two degrees lower than the night before and I slept like a veritable rock.
Winter has not yet arrived, but we’ll be getting nights in the mid-thirties regularly now and you’d think that it would have occurred to me that you don’t want to spend those nights on an uninsulated air mattress. But no – I was so excited at the chance to finally build my new nest in this thing I spent the whole frickin’ warm season constructing that I just leapt ahead oblivious – and got like four hours sleep. One layer of additional insulation and I slept like a baby.
I do need my regular mattress, though, and that will call for a second set of hands. I can get it down from the loft, it’s really quite light. The question is what it’s doing while I get myself down from the loft after it.
If the mattress has handles, (or perhaps even if it doesn’t) can’t you lower the mattress with a rope and then tie off the rope to support the mattress while you go down to get it?
My thought exactly, Ben,
I certainly can, if nothing goes wrong. I developed an elaborate mental plan for doing just that, and if it’s the only alternative I’ll do it. But they’re awkward to handle and if one little thing goes wrong, something important is going to get broken.
@ Ben – those “handles,” if constructed from suspect-quality “rope” will prove disappointing. As in “catastrophically disappointing.”
Mattresses, regardless of size, are uniquely a Royal Pain In The Ass To Move; bulky but not heavy, irreducible in size, unpackagable, uncompressable, etc.
If space is available – probably not, given the minimal expanse inside the Lair – slowly sliding it down a couple angled boards might work (positioned carefully, it’ll rest on the boards while the ladder is traversed). Or, if the roof structure is accessible and sturdy enough, a roof beam secured pulley and a “rope cradle” may do it.
Joel is a rather clever hermit (as is true with all successful hermits, the non-clever ones tend to die quietly in obscurity), and such hermits have the ability to study a problem and arrive at a workable one-person solution for a huge number of problems (don’t ask how I know that). With the air mattress installed and insulated, there’s no time limit on this, so I’m confident another day or two, or three, will produce an acceptable solution.
I see, to recall someone being really pleased about this nylon rope that is quite long….. so, do you have any long 2×4 laying around, two nice but one probably enough? Long enough to lean against the loft, maybe secure with one nail, then do a box tie around the whole mattress, length center and crosswise center, then one end and heave it gently over the loft fence to slide down the 2×4??? Archimedes was quite brilliant, levers, ropes and inclines make life easy(er) 😉 With all my kids flown the coop I am re-learning to use leverage and every other kind of back saving methodology.