My favorite bedroom had a long wall and instead of bedside tables I used a chest on DH's side and a pretty desk on mine. From your name, wearybuilder, you're probably still in the overwhelmed stage of home building - but once you're in and settled, if you have the room, consider changing one or both of your bedside tables - it adds a certain panache to the room that was both functional and stylish. Sky

oceanna, Two words: reciprocating saw. :-) Move as much as you can into another room, cover everything else with dropcloths and/or old sheets, and have at it. We've had to take furniture out in pieces a few times. About 10 years ago we had an enormously-heavy sleeper loveseat from the 60s that DH and his two brothers somehow bent the space-time continuum to get up into our third-floor apartment (top floor of a mid-1800s three-flat), but there was NO way it was getting back down. We disassembled it with a crowbar and hammer and hucked the pieces out the window, which really confused the downstairs neighbors. :-) It was a pity that we had to render it unusable for someone else when I would rather have put it out on the curb as we lived in a very poor neighborhood and it would have been snatched up in a matter of minutes even in its worn-out state, but it had become pretty much unusable for us too and the apartment was far too small to blow that much space on something that couldn't be used - the living room was just barely big enough for one full-size futon couch (moved in and out disassembled), one chair, and a tv stand! That was it! Anyway, if you detach the plywood-box section from the headboard (and footboard if there is one), it is more likely that the headboard(/footboard) could be removed intact and reusable - if you post them on Craigslist, just specify that they are extremely heavy so people should be prepared to bring along help. Cut the plywood into smaller sections that can be moved, although a circular saw would probably be easier for that part. If you/your son aren't up to doing this yourself, hiring a handyman (through Craigslist? heehee) to do the cutting-up and lugging shouldn't be too awfully expensive especially if you don't go through one of those dreadful overpriced franchises. You'll have some cleaning to do in the bedroom but it's better than being stuck with furniture items you no longer like and cannot get rid of. I do know what you mean, BTW. Two houses ago we had a very large master bedroom (or at least very large to me, small compared to some folks'!) and purchased secondhand a 6 piece bedroom set, all pretty large pieces, which fit the room quite nicely. I got quite bored with the matchy-matchy thing and when we moved it did not fit at all into the new house's smaller bedrooms and couldn't really be divided up between rooms. A Craigslister got a nice bargain, since we just needed to get rid of these things that were crowding us out.

Okay, so I showed this thread to my husband and said, "SEE! I AM normal!" My bedside table holds the following: chapstick lamp with bright flourescent bulb for reading eye drops a box of tissues (since I am STILL getting over the flu) cough drops (ditto) some dust dinosaurs (they are really big and have been around forever) and a few books: The Return - Hakan Nesser Life Class - Pat Barker Coming up for Air - George Orwell - gotta read this so I can discuss it with Martin The Book of Air and Shadows - Michael Gruber Empire Falls - Richard Russo Sarah Canary - Karen Joy Fowler - gotta read this to discuss with Vicki Love in the Time of Cholera - GG Marquez The Houses of Children - Coleman Dowell The Portrait - Iain Pears Never Go Back - Robert Goddard Mademoiselle de Maupin - Theophile Gautier The Book on the Bookshelf - Henry Petrosky The Glass Bead Game - Herman Hesse The Age of American Unreason - Susan Jacoby. Yea, I know... my husband says he fears that one morning, he will wake up to find me squished under the bedside stacks. PAM

I'm strongly inclined to wood tones. But I do believe there should be some variety of finishes too..so I have-in different spots of living and family spaces- a glass coffee table, an upholstered ottoman, a rattan stool, a small gilded occasional table with a mirrored top..Every room needs some relief.. I dream of having something lacquered/painted, but I didn't find that piece yet. I thought I did (a wonderful secretaire- I saw it by chance in a consignment shop, and immediately bought it for a song)..but my husband was so much against the idea that I had to drop it. I did read in one of the books on design about the apartment that belonged to well-known designers(maybe Mitchell and Gold? I'm really not sure), and their thing was to paint all their antiques and other furniture in either black or white.