Mattress Forum

I feel like this forum is Mattress Adventurer's Anonymous, and it's GREAT!

My saga begins before I cut open my mattress - I did a bit of mattress shopping, and almost bought a Simmons Beautyrest Visco Plush for about $450.  It's a pocket coil with a bit of memoryfoam, and was the only spring thing in the store that allowed my back to align while side sleeping.  I did not test any foam mattresses at that time due to their cost, and bad things I had heard about all-memory-foam mattresses.  I had not really heard of latex mattresses.  That evening I went home for online price comparisons, and I found this wonderful forum (among other sites).  After much reading I realized that unless I spend over $1500 on pocket coils, they will be made with weak springs, and probably won't last more than 6 months.  Plus, I expect that the thicker wire springs would be too firm for me.  So that was a downer.  The good news is that I also read that people who don't like pocket coils also don't like latex, and I'm hoping the reverse is true, as I love pocket coils, and will pick them everytime in a blind mattress test.  (Case in point - I did not know that the Beautyrest had pocket coils when I picked it as the nicest mattress.)  I was also very happy with my pocket coil mattress before it started to develop a depression.

My old mattress is a $350 IKEA pocket coil I got about 6 years ago.   I cut below the welt, without considering cutting above the welt.  I think it was because I wanted to keep the top intact, as I was expecting to find decent springs, though that turned out to not be the case.  Most of the coils are sort of leaning towards the head of the mattress.  I have not had time to take pictures, but removed the 3/4" PU foam with no squish remaining, put the top back on the mattress, and added 1" of soft latex from Foam By Mail / The Foam Factory.  Mattress pad and sheets are holding all together.  I also tried a thick featherbed, but I like the latex much better, as the thick featherbed only molds to you once, and then it's squished until re-fluffed.  Plus, feathers were trying to poke holes in my ribs.

So I need to do some latex mattress testing to confirm that I want a medium and not a firm.  As life has gotten busy again, I'm short on time for mattress testing, and probably will be for about the next month.  I'm losing sleep due to the old mattress, so I've ordered another inch of soft latex and 5" of HD-R from FBM.  I plan to use them as a temporary good-sleep measure for the next few months, as well as for testing foam as a mattress base.

That makes my temporary set-up:

2 x 1" of 20 ILD latex (FBM, 2 x $75 = $150)
1 x 5" of 36 ILD HD36-R (FBM, $119)
Old mattress top, to support the foam on the:
Platform bed with springy slats from IKEA

I was planning on getting another soft latex topper anyway because I folded the topper in half on the bed and laid down on it before spreading it completely across the bed, and I really liked how it felt.  Any HD36-R that is still useable after 3 months I can use to replace some rock-hard cushions that the former owners of the house left on some basement furniture.  Come to think of it, those cushions are probably very old latex.   :)   I know that some folks will probably say I ought to have gone with the HD36-HQ, but that was going to be about $150 more, which would make the test too expensive. 

I've also been thinking about chemical-free fire retardancy, and figure that once my adventure comes to a close, I might buy some wool quilt batting and quilt my own mattress cover with 360 zipper.

I *will* post pics, but am not sure when.

Thanks all, this is a rockin' forum!

                     ---Amy