Our Grenada Blog

I guess it comes as no surprise to some people how difficult it can be to find the stuff you are looking for. Grenada is a great place to live, but you certainly need lots of patience sometimes.

For instance...after Ivan (yes, more than 3 years ago, if you insist on keeping count), as we had lost all our furniture, we decided we would like to re-decorate the house in a warmer, more caribbean style. This means brighter colors and furniture which tended to be either rattan or bamboo.

This would be a long term project, not because we were not in a rush, but because we could not find everything we wanted in the local stores at a reasonable price (cheap).

To this end, we would buy individual pieces whenever we came across them, occasionally finding rugs, side tables etc. in the shops in town.

One style of furniture which both of us liked, was bamboo, and after yearning over some of the bedroom sets we saw on the internet, we finally found a local importer who said they would be willing to import some, and actually had a catalog to choose from. What made this so attractive was that it was less than half the cost of a comparable bed here...and it looked good!

Now here is one of the little quirks about living here. Grenada has a lot of bamboo, several different species in fact. Yet, there is noone on the island who has tried constructing furniture out of it! Yes, they make trinkets and souvenirs, but nothing more.

While i'm not talented in that area, i cannot understand why no one has tried. Ironically enough, whenever someone imports furniture made with bamboo, it gets sold out literally before it can be put in the stores on display.

Anyway, we finally had the inside track on an attractive four poster king sized bed, made entirely from bamboo and did not waste any time confirming the order and making a downpayment.
We were assured that it would only take about 2 months to get the order, and as it was coming all the way from Indonesia, we could understand why it would take that long. In fact, we had remarked that we expected it to take about 3 months, giving the way the world actually worked.......we should have known better and kept our mouths shut!

Regardless...2 months slowly made its way into 4 then 7 months. We were not too worried, as we had other projects around the house which needed our attention and were going to tackle the decoration of the bedroom last. Several emails and phone calls later, our stuff finally arrives, only 10 months after we had ordered it!
(I said we were not in a rush, didn't i?)

Even after we were told the bed had arrived, we still had to wait nearly 2 weeks before we got it. Anyway,

FINALLY!

Went in to pay the balance and arrange delivery when we got the very apologetic excuse that the bed now costs EC$400 more than what we were quoted.....additional fuel costs, supplier costs, global warming.....it basically meant that we had to pay the extra or we didn't get the bed.
O.k....got the bed delivered.....by two kids, while the owner looked on from the comfort of the vehicle.....don't we have child labour laws here?

Had told them, when we had paid for the bed, that we would like some help in setting it up because we suspected that it would not come with instructions and we wanted to ensure that all the parts were there....no problem, we were told. Their staff would assist....(famous last words).

Yes, the kids tried to help, but they obviously didn't have a clue as to how to assemble the bed. When i asked the owner, his reply was that he was on his lunch break and anyway, he had no idea how to set it up........sorry for asking!

Finally got the bits and pieces put together and of course, some important pieces were missing. Was told that they were in the warehouse...somewhere...but they would be sure to search for them tomorrow...never mind the fact that we had to remove our bed to make room for this one and were looking at the prospect of sleeping on the floor for the night...no no, he would not lose any sleep over that!

Ended up taking the bed to pieces again, just so we could put the old bed back in the room...had a hunch that the missing pieces would not be there tomorrow, but didn't want to jinx things by saying so. Amazingly, they actually delivered the missing bits the next day. This time, we took our time and assembled the bed, treating it first to preserve it from a particularly voracious insect which has a taste for bamboo. Its called the powder post beetle and can reduce a piece of furniture to powder, literally, in just a few short months, shorter than the time it took for us to get it.
I must say, it looks GREAT! Exactly as the photo in the catalogue and precisely what we ordered........at least, so we thought!

Can you guess what was wrong with the bed? It was the wrong size! We had ordered a king and gotten a queen! There is this itsy bitsy difference of approximately 20 centimeters in width......o.k, not that big an issue, but still a bit of a let down.

No, the adventure is not over! We still have to get the mattress! Did you know that there are 2 different standards for queen sized beds?

We didn't know either, until we found out that a queen sized mattress in this part of the world is 60x80 inches, while the eurpoean standard is 160x200 centimeters!......You do the math!........Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!