Suggestions for getting a bed up a flight of stairs?

[Lord Evermore]

One of my roommates moved in months ago and we've still got the foundation for his bed sitting in our kitchen against a wall. (Foundation is the box spring for any that never heard it called a foundation before, like me when I first came to New England from Florida.)

The problem is that it's a queen size bed (he's very tall so anything smaller would be close to too small), and the stairs that it needs to go up have a door right in front of them. So lifting the foundation up high enough to pass the stairs hits the door frame, and it can't be lifted high enough to clear all the stairs; the angle it needs to go up the stairs is just too much and the doorframe stops it hard. It fits through the door on its own, but lifting to clear the stairs can't be done.

Then after that door the stairs almost immediately turn back around and go the opposite direction, with a small landing in the middle, and a wall down the center between the lower and upper sections of stairs. So after it gets through the door it has to be flipped over that wall somehow, which may not be too hard but we haven't been able to try yet.

So, we haven't thought of a way to get it up there yet, so it's been leaning against the kitchen wall for two months.

The only ideas we had involved cutting the frame in half and bending it so it could be moved through the doorway, but we're concerned about the strength of it afterwards (we'd probably use steel bars bolted onto the wood to put it back together).

So, anybody else know of a way to get it up the stairs? The stairs are the ONLY way that bed is going to make it into the room, there's no other entry to that floor. (The mattress itself just folded enough to haul through.)

 

[AlphaIVT]

How many stories of stairs? Is this stair zig-zag or just straight up?

Its not that hard you know... I got my matress you by myself up a straight stair, but you're talking about beds, so it must get hard, why don't you disasemble it?

 

[glenn1]

it's a cheater's method, but....

find a couple of guys who work for a moving company, and offer them 20 bucks to get the boxsprings up the stairs for you. They'll jump at the chance to earn some quick money (20 bucks for moving one set of box springs? hell yeahhhhh!) and then they can figure it out. After all, they have experience (presumably) in situations like this, they'll be able to figure it out pretty easily (perhaps).

My thoughts anyway.

 

[cxim]

pending the type... a window may be quickly removed from the frame & the foundation hoisted up & window replaced.

This is often the method used for large pieces of furniture.

 

[Monel Funkawitz]

Cut the biznitch in half and Mig weld it afterwards... its what I did.

 

[Yo Ma Ma]

Hoist through window if available, 2nd that suggestion.

 

[Susan]

Too bad it's not a cardboard bed. I slept on one of those for 6 years and it was very comfortable.

They are made specifically for the problem that your friend is now having, LE. The frame is put together piece by piece (cardboard), and the mattress can be folded to fit through the stairwell (foam).

You may want to try Funkel's method instead just to get that dang thing out of your kitchen, though.

 

[Lord Evermore]

I'll clarify this. The stairs only go up one floor, but they do a switch-back thing; you go up half a floor, then have to turn 180 degrees and go up the second half, and there's a wall down the center between the two half-flights and a small landing (the ceiling above the landing is also sloped and low, so you can't fit two people side by side standing straight up). The stairs themselves aren't especially steep, but the doorframe is right on top of the first step, so there's no room for maneuvering the foundation into the stairwell and past the doorframe before lifting it.

The foundation is wood (as most I've seen are), and is a queen size (not full or double, queen size). So welding it back together wouldn't work. We'd thought of cutting it in half and folding it, then using steel bars and bolting them onto the cut parts of the frame to hold it together again, but we're not sure how stable that might be.

Being a queen size, it'd take a pretty large window to fit it through, even with the frame removed. Plus we rent this place, so we can't just go ripping windows out. This set of stairs is pretty much the only way to get it to the second floor.

 

[rahvin]

You are trying to take it up parrellel to the floor right? Have you tried tipping it up on end to go around the corner, unless your ceilings are under 7' you should have no problem doing that.

 

[GL]

Couldn't he sell this foundation and buy two smaller ones and end up with what is probably a bigger bed but one that is substantially more mobile?

-GL

 

[Lord Evermore]

Rahvin, we're first trying to get it into the stairwell, then we'll deal with getting it around the turn in the stairs. The bed fits through the doorway fine on its own, but the first step is right through the door, so the foundation has to be lifted as soon as it starts to go through the doorway, and then it hits the upper part of the doorframe, but doesn't clear that first step, so it can't actually pass through the door and up the stairs.

We did think about selling it, but never went farther than the initial thought. Nobody is really concerned about the bed being in the kitchen, we don't use the kitchen for much, but it'd be nice to get rid of it.