When you live in the same place for 30 years, you develop a huge pool of people you can count on for just about anything you need. Friends, family, coworkers, ex-boyfriends … at any given moment, there are many shoulders to lean on. If your car is in the shop, someone will give you a ride. If it’s cold, someone will loan you a sweater. If you’re not feeling well, someone will cover your work—or at the very least, remind you about the deadline you missed while you were out sick. You even have a professional pool: your go-to manicurist, dog sitter, plumber, etc. Whatever you need is only a phone call or text message away.

Once I moved to Kentucky, my pool shrank drastically. In fact, it isn’t even a pool anymore —it’s more of a puddle. The funny thing is, I didn’t realize this until I had to transport my boxed, Amazon-ordered bed frame from the mail area into my new apartment. The box was MUCH heavier than I imagined, and I couldn’t even move it an inch.

Thankfully, I had heard professional movers were going to be around the next day. (Since the entire building is undergoing a renovation, movers come in every couple of months to install new appliances and such.) So, I spoke with the property management team to see if I could enlist a couple of people for my personal move. Not only did they tell me it was OK, but they said the movers could assemble my bed frame, too. It was perfect!

The following day, two movers brought the box into my apartment, opened it up, and just as I thought they were going to get to work, they announced that one of the pieces was broken. What’s more, is it wasn’t just any piece—it was the middle board of the base, the very center of the foundation. Since there was no point in working on a bed frame with a broken part, they left while I made a phone call to request a replacement piece. The package was going to take seven to ten business days to get here, which meant my mattress would have to reside on the floor for a while longer.

A week and a half later, my replacement board arrived! Since it was only one piece, I was able to carry it upstairs myself. But, who was going to put the frame together? The property manager wasn’t going to hire movers again for another six weeks! I thought about calling my puddle of friends—all two of them—but decided I’d better save the favor-asking for more important things. Then I thought about doing it myself, until I remembered the time I tried to put my breakfast nook together: After 20 frustrating minutes, I had given up and pulled out my phone-a-friend card. Though my nook was considerably more complicated than my bed frame, I decided it was still probably safer to have someone else do it.

So naturally, I did what any other person in my position would do in 2016: I went online. A quick “handyman” Google search led me to Thumbtack, a resource for just about any professional service you could imagine. “Consider it done,” read the website’s headline. “From house painting to personal training, we bring you the right pros for every project on your list.” It seemed easy enough.

Within ten minutes, I had completed my request and received three quotes for the job. I reviewed each person’s profile, then replied to a handyman located in a town about half an hour away. (It seemed like a bit a commute to me, but he DID know my zip code when he sent his quote.) After a couple of messages back and forth, we scheduled a date and time for my bed frame assembly.

A few days later, Caleb from Shepherdsville arrived to take care of the unfinished project that had been laying on my floor for three weeks. He was professional, considerate and efficient. He was also nice enough to let Koa force him into playing a few rounds of fetch while he worked. My mattress finally has its home! And you know what? I think I just found the first person to put into my professional pool—er, puddle.