On Midsummer’s Eve we finally moved into the upstairs rooms.

Downstairs has a kitchen, a living room, a large bedroom, a bathroom, a weird room behind the bathroom, and two hallways. Upstairs has two smaller rooms and a toilet. Until now we’ve really only lived downstairs. One of the upstairs rooms has served as a library, with bookshelves along all walls, and also housed many of the plants that we brought with us from London. The other room has basically been a transit warehouse for unpacking and sorting books, but it’s occasionally doubled as a guest bedroom. (We tend to refer to it as “the room with the boxes”.)

We know we will have to vacate the downstairs bedroom for the refurbishment some time later this year. It’s not imminent (we haven’t even got planning permission yet) but it is certain to happen some time within the next half a year. We also think that Ingrid might get more and better sleep if she doesn’t have to share a bedroom with a (possibly rather noisy) baby.

Circumstances led to it all happening on Midsummer’s Eve. We were recently given a child bed that Ingrid’s cousins have outgrown; we recently found time to sort through the last few boxes of books; we had guests coming for a Midsummer barbecue whom we could ask for help carrying the beds upstairs.

Unfortunately carrying our king-size bed upstairs turned out to be impossible: it just won’t fit up the staircase. Eric and I ended up sleeping on our guest mattresses instead. It all felt like a makeshift camp: us sleeping on mattresses on the floor, Ingrid sleeping next to piles of boxes and a bunch of plants that we haven’t gotten around to moving yet.

And, after bravely promising she’d sleep on her own in her own room, Ingrid tottered into ours at about 2 o’clock. Then she proceeded to toss and turn and climb around for what felt like an eternity. I guess everything felt strange and out of place. After a while Eric gave up and moved out to Ingrid’s room; after about an hour Ingrid finally settled in, too. All in all, it was the worst night’s sleep we’ve had in many months.

Tomorrow we’re going emergency bed shopping. (IKEA was closed today because of Midsummer’s Day.) Then we’ll do some cleaning up in Ingrid’s new bedroom, to make it feel less like a warehouse. But the new master bedroom is going to feel like a camp for the next half a year, or however long the refurbishment will take. After all, we will have to squeeze in all the important parts of a bedroom in addition to all the bookshelves that are there now.

Does anyone need/want a wooden base spring mattress (resårbotten)? IKEA Sultan something or other, 160cm, medium hard, bought in 2002, only rarely jumped on.