h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When we moved into our house on October 1, there was only one minor problem with the furniture. The major problems, unrelated to furniture, were that Mrs. Subcom had her second psychotic episode during the days leading up to the move, plus we had to schedule her appointment to see a doctor & resume her medication in the middle of moving day, and I got a killer migraine in the middle of moving day.

But the only minor problem with our furniture was that the boxspring part of our queen-size bed would not fit through the turns in our stairway. The mattress fit upstairs, but the boxspring stayed downstairs. Our temporary solution was to leave the mattress on the floor and save up for a new two-piece boxspring section, or else I could try to someday build a bed customized for our bedroom (it could happen).

Is this a tragedy yet? We had to sleep on a mattress on the floor. That mattress is a few years old, but structurally it's in fine shape. I slept fine. Not being a princess, I can't feel the difference between sleeping on a mattress on the floor versus a mattress on boxspring and frame. The only inconvenience is that it's so low, you have to pull yourself up almost off the floor first thing in the morning, which is when I'm at my most wobbly. But I could have gone on like this indefinitely. We're not quite in financial shape to be dropping money on frivolous things, having just purchased the house, trying to save up a few hundred extra to visit Mrs. Subcom's family in TX and Mississippi for Xmas. As far as I was concerned, jacking up the bed by a foot or two was not a hardship, and we could wait a while to remedy it.

In describing this problem to others, Mrs. Subcom began saying that we needed a new bed. I tried to remind her that the mattress and frame was fine, that we just needed a boxspring to fit up the stairs. She said that we might as well get a whole new bed.

So last weekend, my mother the truck driver stops by our place on her way home. (No, really, she is a truck driver. Her handle is "Bashful.") Ma says she heard an ad for a furniture store, so she decided to get us a bed for Christmas. Awesome! Pile into Ma's car and check out the furniture store.

Mrs. Subcom and I stretch out on the different sizes and types of display beds they have on sale. I know Ma's not made of money, so I'm sticking with the ones that are on sale. "No, this one's pretty good. Come back from that pillowy monster and try this one."

Of course the only queen size beds they have with two-piece boxsprings to fit up our stairs are in the more expensive range. Ma is nodding her head, and the saleswoman is explaining all the advantages of the higher ranged bedding, and how all the lower priced bedding will pretty much crack up and fall apart within a few years anyway. (Which makes me wonder, why are you even selling it if it's so crappy?)

The final choice is a "pillow-top" mattress with two piece boxspring. One thousand dollars.

Don't get me wrong, because I love it, and hope to sleep on it for decades to come. It's comfy as hell. If my mother somehow finds this journal entry and reads it, please don't take it wrong. I am thoroughly grateful!

But I could never pay that much for a bed. It's insane. For that price, you could get a used car that would run for at least six months before needing work. For that price, I could replace most of the windows in my house, which I'll need to do eventually, or almost reshingle the roof, which needs to be done sooner.

So the saleswoman tries to sell us other junk, furniture polish and a mattress cover. No, thank you, we're all set. We still have our queen-size metal frame to support the new mattress and boxsprings. It doesn't have a strut down the center, which the saleswoman says we'll need with this two-piece boxspring, but I figured she's just trying to get more money out of us. That's okay, we'll rig up a 2x6 and bolt it to the frame, something like that.

They don't have one in stock, so they're going to deliver it in a few days. The night before it comes, Mrs. Subcom makes me move the old mattress and assemble the metal frame and headboard in our bedroom. We sleep on the hide-a-bed in the living room, so the delivery dudes will be able to instantly set the new bed on the frame and be done.

They deliver it! Yay! It's tall and comfy and we don't have to crawl out of bed anymore, and we all live happily ever after. It looks like the frame will support things fine, but I tell Mrs. Subcom that we'll cut and drill and assemble this 2x6 that we lugged over from Ma's, maybe this weekend I'll mess with it. Not in the middle of the week.

Two nights later, as I get out of our new bed, the metal frame breaks. The section at the foot of the bed cracked and bent to the floor. I guess we won't need to jury-rig a 2x6 anymore.

We move the bedding off, unbolt the headboard, take the broken metal frame back out of the room, lay the boxsprings on the floor and the mattress on top. It's a lot higher than the old mattress was, but it's not towering like it was ten minutes ago.

Hoping to cheer myself up a little, depending on her answer, I ask Mrs. Subcom, "Was the real problem with the old bed just that the mattress was too old, or that we couldn't get the boxsprings up to the bedroom, or that it was on the floor?"

She's not worried about cheering me up, or chooses not to. "It was a problem because it was on the floor."

So after getting Ma to throw $1000 at the problem, we're 6 or 8 inches higher, but still on the floor.

Epilogue:
Mrs. Subcom recommends we forget the metal frame and save up for a full wooden bed with headboard and footboard and support down the middle. I'm struggling against the footboard, but otherwise we agree.

Yep.
I like it closer to the floor. Less further to fall in the morning. And rolling is such good exercise.

For the first time in our marriage (all of thirteen years, don't mention it) we got a "real" bed last year. The spousal unit drug me over to a co-worker's house where I was supposed to "look at it to see if I liked it".
Apparently that was not the way it was explained to the sellers.
We got there and they loaded a water bed and frame from a shed into a pickup truck and plucking a hundred dollar check from the unit's hand, off we went.
Skipping getting all the damned pieces into the house and the subsequent assembly of same...
the damn thing leaked.
I had to mop up and scatter towels around, and drain the thing enough to apply the patch that the kind folks had supplied. Leaked again.
Turns out that the helpful husband had assembled the thing with some wood screw heads proud and the bed liner and the mattress became pierced.
Drain it again. Fold the stupid (and truly heavy) mattress up and practically kill myself putting it out the window and dragging it to the street. (we have a wonderful municipal truck that comes around every two weeks and picks up the stuff that won't fit in the can)

More time passes.
Now we are sleeping on a Coleman camper's air mattress that I have to air up once a week with an electric pump. We have two eggcrate foam pads on top of the mattress.
Not too bad.

But nothing, for firmness, can beat sleeping on the floor. Which we've done, but the unit says it "looks tacky".