Hello,
I have been reading through this forum quite a bit over the last week, and I definitely appreciate that it is here, as it has helped me to arrive at some decisions that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. I figured I would start a thread to document some of them, since I definitely plan on taking advantage of the associated discounts / promotions.
In our local area, our retailers are mainly limited to the type with perpetual going-out-of-business sales, furniture stores that are way too high-end for my taste, the over-hyped fad of the moment, and the Original Mattress Factory. We bought our first OMF bed, one of these:
[or whatever they were calling it 10 years ago] in their second firmest choice, Queen, with the 81-coil box springs, with the assistance of one of the Bush tax rebates, however long ago that was. I can’t tell that this bed feels any different now than when it was new. It has been worth every penny we paid for it, and really wasn’t that expensive.
When we expanded our family and bought a new house, my wife wanted to try something different, so we bought a second bed that was one step softer, right in the middle of their comfort choices. We tried it for close to a year, and couldn’t stand it - we were always rolling into the middle of the bed. We were able to pay some reasonable fee to have it exchanged or remanufactured. My memory is pretty fuzzy on the details - with a 0-18 month-old moving from bassinet to crib, and having to go to work after waking up every two hours, we did a lot of alternating between the guest room and the master bedroom on the opposite end of the house.
Before the baby, I had spent many years working at night. As we finally began sleeping together every night, and as our old, cranky cats moved into our bed to escape the new dog, we seem to have been forced into being rigid unmoving back sleepers, whether we feel like it or not. Getting up in the mornings is really starting to hurt all over, and is putting a serious damper on the amount of house / car work I can get done without taking time off work or paying someone, and I have decided it is time to do something about it.
Coincidentally, I realized my son is very close to the weight limit for the crib in toddler bed configuration, and I had a bunk bed stored for this occasion.
So, after a lot of thinking, I have decided to go with this for the bottom bunk:
in Firm. I felt the Tuft and Needle Five was a very worthy second choice, but I am taking their word that the lamination seams can’t be felt, and so I think latex is worth the price bump. Today, if I ever get done writing this post, I’m going to be working on building a 2x4 slatted frame with <3" gaps to sit on the bunk bed rails, instead of using the sheet of plywood that came with it. I did consider 1x3, 1x4, 2x2, and 2x3, but I want this to be overbuilt. I’d really like this combination to last until he’s too tall for it - hopefully 10 years.
For our mattress, the SleepEZ 13000 in Eastern King was a pretty easy choice - once I had spent plenty of time looking at the options. I think we’re going to benefit from Dunlop cores, and a thickness greater than 10", and the price is excellent for that value. When we bought the second bed, we had discussed getting a King, and decided not to. Sometime around then, I had first become familiarized with latex mattresses. We decided that our ultimate future bed might be a latex King, but weren’t ready to make that commitment at the time.
If either of those decisions had gone differently, and if it wasn’t for these forums, we would have an innerspring or 10" latex/polyfoam King from OMF (not that those are bad choices, just underinformed.) I don’t know what we would have done for the bunk bed, but I wouldn’t have been mindful of the airflow problem with the plywood foundation. I feel much better having waited, and having done more research.
I’m going to contact the SleepEZ folks about the layers for our mattress. I’m very undecided about the rest of the bed - I’m leaning towards buying a traditional (non-wire) metal frame, and building a 2x4 slatted foundation and plywood headboard, simply because I am capable of it, and aren’t enthusiastic about my choices. Given that my bed is for sleeping, not display, why would I spend over $200 on a headboard made of particleboard and fluff, or need a “platform” to take up even more space in my room? I’ll try to update this thread with anything I end up building, if I can remember to take pictures.
If anyone has any advice on quality metal frames, I’d really enjoy hearing about it in the next few days [I haven’t done any searches yet.]. My starting point is going to be whatever OMF sells for whatever price they charge:
I’ll also talk to the SleepEZ folks about my foundation thoughts - if a $300+ store bought model is in my best interests, I’ll happily go with that.