Mattress Forum

My wife and I have been sleeping on a Sealy king mattress that we bought about 6 years ago.  It's nothing fancy, just a firm, non-pillowtop, flippable mattress (but IIRC it was promoted as flipping "optional").  Though I spent $1000 for this no-frills mattress, I thought I was making an investment in something that would last for 10 years, just like the 'warranty' said.  We flipped it a few times a year whenever we'd think about it, just to be on the safe side.  For probably at least a year now we haven't been sleeping all that well.  The usual: waking up, tossing, shifting positions often, arise in the morning with minor aches etc.  My wife's been really having it worse.  We thought it was due to her working as a dental hygienist and her pregnancy last year.

So, about a month ago we each had the opportunity to sleep alone in the bed, due to each of us traveling on separate occasions.  We came to the conclusion that sleeping in the middle was a huge improvement.  We never really thought much about the body impressions before.  After all, I'm 165 lbs and she is 125... not exactly your average overweight folks.  So I ended up ordering a 3" memory foam topper from Overstock.com for about $135.  I think its supposed to be 4# foam.  We got the foam, and its pretty decent memory foam I guess.  We put it on and then put the fitted sheet over it and went to bed.  Neither of us liked the feel of the memory foam right underneath us, but we gave it a few days.  Then, I put a mattress pad (the kind with polyfill and an elastic skirt all the way around) on top of the memory foam then the fitted sheet on that.  That was better.  However, after about a week of this we came to the conclusion that this made the hammocking worse.  This dashed my hopes of the topper hiding the body impressions.  After the initial novelty of the memory foam had worn off, we think we were actually sleeping worse.  But yet again, sleeping in the middle wasn't bad at all.

So, in disgust and desperation I started scouring the internet.  I guess when I poured over the mattress warranty I knew I was doomed.  I used a long straight edge to measure the body impressions and they were only about 1/2" so I was out of luck -- 1.5" minimum.  My search led me to this forum, which I've spent the last few weeks searching and reading.  Fantastic information.  So convinced I had nothing to lose and armed with courage obtained from reading other's forum posts, I cut the stitching off of 3 sides of the mattress, and opened that sucker up.  On top was about a 3/4" polyurethane (PU) foam eggcrate (convoluted) layer, then beneath that was a super thin 1/2" solid PU layer, then pressed shredded fiber looking blanket over the box springs.  I removed all of the PU foam and checked it out.  I was a little disappointed -- it didn't look as bad as I expected.  I was hoping to see a complete pancake at the butt and back spots.  There is a tinge of an impression, but not much.  So, just to experiment, I put the 3" memory foam over the fiber blanket and folded the mattress ticking back over it.  Since the 3" memory foam was considerably thicker, I had to coax the ticking back on.  I ended up stitching it with thread in a few spots to keep it in place.  I put the mattress pad over that, and then the fitted sheet.  OK!  Now we were getting somewhere.  This was a definite improvement.  We slept on that for about a week.  My wife went from "we must buy a new mattress this weekend!" to "the mattress is pretty good now".  In fact, her complaint now is that she can't get out of bed in the morning.

However, there was still a definite firmness difference between the center and my side, and I was still waking up a few times having to shift positions and move around because my back was stiff.  So, it looks like the inner springs are shot.  At one point before cutting open the mattress we pulled it off the box springs and put it directly on the floor to see if the hammocking improved.  It didn't, so I concluded that the mattress itself was sagging and it wasn't a boxspring problem.  This amazes me with our weight that we wore out a 10 year rated innerspring in about 5 years.

So the other night I got a wild idea and pulled a burlap-like Mexican-style blanket we have out of the closet and folded it a few times lengthwise.  I then placed the blanket underneath the mattress but on top of the box springs in the approximate area where I lay and where the body impression is most pronounced.  I got in bed, laid there for a bit, then adjusted the blanket.  After about 3 iterations it felt like the bed wasn't hammocking.  So, I went to sleep.  PERFECT!  I woke up feeling like a million bucks.  I've had 2 nights of sleep on this configuration and I am extremely happy.

Though I'm happy with how the mattress is sleeping right now with my jury-rigged configuration, I've been bitten by the bug and now I intend to build my own foam mattress.  I'm planning on using FoamByMail (FMB).  We are thinking about using latex for the upper layers.  So far this forum hasn't steered me wrong, and now I'm feeling more adventurous.  The quest begins!  I'll probably stitch up the mattress at some point, shouldn't be too bad, and put it in the guest room as an upgrade over the queen that's in there.

So to anyone out there even remotely considering cutting open the mattress -- I say GO FOR IT!  It's not a big freakin' deal and I think you have a very high chance of improving the comfort, even if its just with a cheap topper from Overstock to replace the compacted PU foam.