RIP, Behemoth

Our house is a 3-story townhouse. The first floor is dining room, kitchen, living room, laundry nook (my beloved), a half-bath, and a closet. The second floor is master bedroom and bath, Claire's room, guest room, and Claire's/guest bath. The third floor is kind of like a really large, finished attic space. It's a large room with a couple closets, a half-bath, and a very strange open nook hovering over the stairs. Awkward nook hovering awkwardly over the stairs. 

When we moved into our house, we inherited quite a few items. Things like a working mini fridge, a GROSS deep fryer, an assortment of random vases and platters, AND the most monstrous TV imaginable (a professional junk remover estimated it to weigh 300
lbs). Housed in the awkward third-floor nook. It's been a nagging frustration for the past year. It wasn't exactly functional for us, and we thought that nook could be put to better use as a storage space (with a curtain to conceal the storage, obviously). We nixed the idea of asking friends to help us remove it, because, well, we like our friends and want them to stay our friends. We also couldn't come up with a good way to remove it without a lot of help because the nook is suspended about 7 feet over the uneven landing of the staircase. Such a head-scratcher.

Eventually, we decided to bite the bullet and call professionals. Brad even found a coupon that would knock a chunk off of the estimate the guy gave us over the phone. It looked like it was going to be a breeze, and we were patting ourselves on the back for just deciding to cough up the cash and get it done.

The guys showed up and evaluated the situation. For a looooong time. After a long period of looking, measuring, and weighing, they deemed our situation a head-scratcher. The owner told us he had never seen a situation quite like ours and was going to need to go home and puzzle over it for a while. He was thinking scaffolding was going to be needed...and our estimate was going up by several hundred.

Brad and I moped for a hot minute and then resolved to GET IT DONE. Ourselves, for free. So, Brad monkey-ed up into the nook, I passed him tools, and he took that dinosaur apart piece by piece. It took all of Claire's nap time (2.5 hours) and quite a bit of elbow grease to get the SOLID wooden base out of there, but we got that sucker out.

The question we keep getting (and asking ourselves) is HOW did it get up there in the first place? The best theory we have going is that when the attic was being finished, the nook was customized for this particular tv. The room is set up for surround-sound, so we're guessing the third floor was a rec room of some kind (we use it as office and sewing/Christmas and outgrown clothes storage, occasionally extra guest room). 

We don't know if the tv still worked, and we would have liked to have salvaged it rather than stripping it down to its nuts and bolts. However, it was a model from the early 2000's (not currently in popular demand), and we weren't going to pay upwards of $500 in order to have it removed. Therefore, it had to go the hard way. Don't worry, though: we took it to the appropriate city site for electronics disposal. We're friends of the environment. We were also very careful in the monkey-ing, shimmying, and hefting. I promise.

Now, for some perspective and befores/afters:

This is the best "before" that I have. See how Brad looks like a little Elf on the Shelf? That's how big the nook and tv are! In this picture, he'd already turned the tv to the side, so please imagine it facing forward with about 6 inches to spare on the sides. BIG, right?

Finished product. We were so proud. I think we high-fived.

RIP, Behemoth. You aren't missed.