First off, I just want to thank everyone for this site. While it can be completely overwhelming, the detailed information and insight provided here has been invaluable and really appreciated. That said, here was my experience:
Old mattress 12 year old S&F box spring that I am ashamed to say how much we paid for and now is riddled with dips and a source of pain for my wife and me.
Stats- Me 5’10" 155#- stomach and back sleeper, Wife 5’2" 120 (and curvy)- stomach, side, and back sleeper.
For fun, we visited a couple of mattress stores, really to test out a variety of beds to see if we could gauge our material preference and firmness requirements. Only thing I learned is used car salesmen and mattress salesmen are cut from the same cloth (and we met some very nice people- they just knew little about their product). This process yielded minimal results, except we did really like the YuMe bed with air conditioning!
Based on this site, we geared up to head to Ft. Worth for the sites recommended. First off, we visited City Mattress (http://www.citymattressfactory.com/). Very sketchy location and my wife wondered what I got her into. We tested all 6 or so floor model latex beds. We liked the firmness of the Covington, and the comfort of the poly foam/gel Bamboo bed, but ultimately we decided on the Covington Ultima, which combined a latex core with gel foam topper.
I was a little disappointed that the very nice sales lady knew very little about the mattress components and other details, especially given that it is made 15 feet from where we were standing.
Here is what I think I know about the bed:
3” gel foam topper – 6-8” Dunlop latex core (unknown ILD- I do have a call in on this) and 3” gel topper on the other side. 14” total mattress height
This bed seemed to be a perfect blend of very good firmness with a little plushness for comfort. We laid on it 3 separate times for extended periods and in different positions. No sinking in and good spinal alignment in all positions.
Location two- Original Mattress Factory (THE MATTRESS FACTORY | MATTRESS SALE | FORT WORTH | DALLAS | OKLAHOMA). Again, sketchy location, but at this point we were in. They only had two floor models a medium 8” and a firm 10”. The medium was too squishy and the firm was way too hard (floor like). Something in the middle may have worked and they were clearly more than capable of making anything we wanted/needed, but this is exactly our problem- we don’t know what we need/want!
I was actually really surprised that the guy working knew very little about the mattress, components, makeup, etc. Their website is pretty complete, so I knew far more about their mattresses than he did. Again, despite the bed having been made 5’ away.
As an accommodation, we tried the firm (one side had ~1” topper) and we added a cover that made the bed more comfortable, but I just did not feel right about the bed or the cover. We left here a little disappointed, but with a clear understanding that they could build whatever we wanted (if we only knew). Their prices were a tad higher than City Mattress as well.
So here are my questions:
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Any experience with the Covington Ultima?
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Any thoughts on the gel topper? It really did seem to be a perfect blend of firmness and comfort for us (no sinking in feeling like the memory foam bed). We took photos of our backs on the various beds and the Ultima kept both our spines in a good neutral position.
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What else are we missing?
Appreciate any feedback and again, really appreciate this site for helping us find value (cross of price and quality) in our bed hunt. We really feel like the quality at both these places blew away what we saw at the mattress shops and at about half the price.