First of all, thank you Phoenix for this valuable service and all the effort you put into it. I finally made a decision and bought the Aloe Alexis mattress from Brooklyn Bedding. We’ve been sleeping on it for two weeks now and it’s great.
It was a long road for me. I first started thinking it was time for a mattress last fall. That was when I discovered this site. I read all the articles and started following the forum. I put it on hold for the holidays, then came back in January. At first I thought it was crazy to buy a mattress online, but there was so much good press for Dreamfoam Bedding, that I came around. While I was looking, I discovered that they have their own web site as Brooklyn Bedding. The mattresses on their site are a little more expensive than what they have on Amazon, but they come with a nice return policy and a free comfort exchange to make the online aspect go down a little smoother. Add to that the two free pillows (just “like” them on Facebook), and the 5% Mattress Underground discount to sweeten the deal.
At first I was going to get the Bamboo Bliss, but then I thought that for only $200 more I could double the latex layer and get the Aloe Alexis, so that’s what I did. So what are my thoughts? Did I mention that it is very comfortable? In the end, that’s what really counts. But beyond that, here some more thoughts.
The zippered top already came in handy. The top latex layer shifted a bit at some point in the delivery or setup. I was able to easily unzip the top and reposition it. Nice feature
We chose the medium (level 6) firmness based on the feel of mattresses we laid on during our search. While it’s very comfortable, we’re debating on whether we might like to go a step on the softer side. We’ll probably stick with what we have, but it’s nice to have the option to switch the comfort layer for free. We have 120 days to decide, and from what I’ve read, it may soften up a bit in the first 30 days anyway.
We needed to get a foundation for it. They sell a wire frame (“Genius Hi Rise”) for $159 (queen). I looked around and found that WalMart sells essentially the same thing for $79, so I got that. I set it inside our bed frame and it comes to just below the height of of the bed rails, so only the legs are visible. Speaking of which, I’m not used to having the metal leg in the center (lengthwise) of the bed, so it didn’t take me long to stub my toe on it. To protect against that, I put some foam pipe insulation on it to soften it up. Other than that, the frame creaks slightly when getting in and out of bed, but it doesn’t make any noise when we’re in bed, which is much more important.
The shipping weight for this mattress was 140 pounds, and I had to get it up to the second floor. Fortunately I have a strong son, there’s no way that box was going anywhere without help. Anyone considering an online mattress purchase should keep that in mind.
I assumed that the mattress would just roll out correctly. That was a bad assumption. By the time I noticed, the mattress was upside down and I had to wrestle with it to turn it over (did I mention that it’s 140 pounds? Well, maybe 130 without the box). To be fair, I was filming the setup and was preoccupied with that. Had I been paying closer attention, I probably would have recognized that it was bottoms-up and adjusted the process before it was too late.
And speaking of filming, I put together a fun video of the setup. Check it out: http://youtu.be/P-ekQGVOe7Q
Thanks again for your good advice.
Hopefully it will soften up just enough in the next month or so. Lew