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Hi All, I can't say how much I have enjoyed and learned from this forum. I am especially fascinated with the mattress surgeries and the photos. Can't wait to cut mine open. However, I have made a temporary fix of our body impressions today and I want to make sure I won't hurt the springs and I am sure you guys will have the answer... so here are the details; 4 year old Ca. King Chattam & Wells Luxe Vll (was top of the line before Mr. Kluft moved it into Spring Air line) almost 7 grand! Most comfortable bed I have ever experienced. However, we now have severe body impressions, more so on one side. I have a cutaway jpeg I will try to post, however suffice to say from the cutaway picture, it looks like a regular one-sided pocketed coil mattress with 2" of wool batting then 1" of pink foam, with a 5" topper sewn on top. The topper or Euro-top I believe they called it is filled with what looks like 2" of pink foam 1" latex I"pink convoluted foam, then 1" cotton batting then another 1" of something quilted into the top cover. I remember something about memory foam in the specs but I don't know where that is. Anyhoo, I had an egg crate foam topper hanging around, and after reading some posts here about putting carpet or other stuff under the spring mattress to fill out the body impressions I decided to give it a try. I cut the foam in half and folded each side to approximate the impressions length and width and while my dh held up each side of the mattress I laid the foam on top of the box springs. Works great, I have my old bed back. However, I was wondering if displacing the mattress springs in this way would or could damage them. I remember reading a post here about moving or bending the springs more than 30 degrees would damage them. I would hate to do that, cuz I have a mattress surgery in my future and I wouldn't want to ruin what I believe are quite good springs. What do you think? JoJo p.s. I can't find the forum instructions for posting photos...any info or links to old posts with instructions? |
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HI BillB, Thanks for the reply. I LOVED your pictorial of your FBM bed. I also loved Cloud9's surgery 101. Between the two of you and the link to the photos of all of the cutaways of the used beds my eyes have been opened...and I "SEE THE LIGHT." No more mystery here...I have to say that the longer the majors try to keep the lid on the truth about the innards the longer a real opportunity exists for someone, either one of the small mfg. or someone like YOU to get into the business and market the new and improved bed systems to the public via infomercials. Mark my words...someone is going to make a fortune on this venture. Regarding the photo upload...I went to flickr.com and uploaded my photo then clicked on ALL SIZES and a window opens and below the photo is a PINK headline that tells you how to link to another website. Basically, you cut and paste the HTML where you want it to go. It has the code as well as the url and when you paste it where you want, your photo magically appears. VERY EASY. I had to hunt around the help section of flickr cuz it isn't logical to press the all sizes button to link your photo to another site...go figure. Anyway, BillB, you didn't say what you thought about my monster bed? |
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Jo Jo, Don't worry about ruining your springs by removing the foam--it's not attached to the coil unit. As you can see from the cutaway, it's just lying on the top. The padding layers peel apart like lunch meat in a sandwich. My mattress has an open offset coil unit inside a foam encasement and the corners of the bottom layer of foam was lightly glued to that. You have pocket coils and there doesn't appear to be any encasement. The bottom layer of batting may be wrapped around the edge support of the coil unit. A little probing and you should be able to tell whether it is also glued to the coils. If it is just leave it in place, since it may be acting like an insulator between the coils and the padding layers. In any case the body impressions probably don't penetrate to this layer anyway. Good luck with your mattress surgery. I'm so glad I did mine. I love the way the mattress feels with latex and memory foam over the coils instead of lots and lots of crappy convoluted PU foam. Now I hate to get out of bed in the morning. |
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Hi Cloud9, Thanks for your response. Do you suppose that the body impressions are in the top 2 layers of white batting? I saw where you had to un-quilt the batting from the ticking in the top cover. This mattress is super heavy duty as you can see from the cutaway. I am thinking that the only thing I will have to replace will be the top two layers of batting. Since that is what crushes and also is what give it the cushy feeling I think I will have to find a replacement that is easily switched out in several years again. Also, I was wondering where you think I should start the incision? Ideally, to retain the strong edge, I would think I should cut on the top sides above the welting. I wonder if I should try to un-welt the top and find a way to re welt it after the surgery. If I end up just taking out 2 batting layers I could sew 'er back up and just replace the cushy layers with a topper. Thoughts? |
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JoJo - that's a really nice looking mattress you have - I think its well worth taking the scalpel to. You're really lucky to have some of these other forum users like Cloud9 to have gone first and attempted this successfully. Who would ever think to tear up their mattress and fix it? It's a great idea and makes perfect sense if the coils are in good shape. |
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JoJo wrote: Hi Cloud9, Thanks for your response. Do you suppose that the body impressions are in the top 2 layers of white batting? I saw where you had to un-quilt the batting from the ticking in the top cover. This mattress is super heavy duty as you can see from the cutaway. I am thinking that the only thing I will have to replace will be the top two layers of batting. Since that is what crushes and also is what give it the cushy feeling I think I will have to find a replacement that is easily switched out in several years again. Also, I was wondering where you think I should start the incision? Ideally, to retain the strong edge, I would think I should cut on the top sides above the welting. I wonder if I should try to un-welt the top and find a way to re welt it after the surgery. If I end up just taking out 2 batting layers I could sew 'er back up and just replace the cushy layers with a topper. Thoughts?
Until you get your mattress open and see what's going on inside it's impossible to say what you'll need to replace. If it's only the batting that makes it easier, but soft convoluted foam fails very quickly, so you may have to--or just want to replace the top most layer with something more durable. I agonized long and hard over where to make my incision. It depends on what your objective is. Some people who have performed mattress surgery just removed the entire top by unraveling the welt. This will save you the trouble--and it is A LOT of trouble--removing the quiliting and any foam sewn inside the cover. I wanted to preserve the top--just remove the tufting which I disliked, and the two layers of soft convoluted PU foam inside--which I hated. I cut under the welt on three sides so that it remained attached to the cover. The sides of my mattress were very well padded and supported by innerfacing. I just added some binding tape at the top to prevent any fraying and provide a smooth, clean edge to which I attached velcro tabs to secure the top in place. You have to decide what your objective is and go from there. Initially I envisioned putting in a big zipper mattress kit style, but you really need an industrial strength sewing machine to do that, plus I'd have to remove everything inside the cover--springs, foam encasement etc, and it was more effort than I wanted to go through. In the end velcro worked just fine, and when you slip a mattress pad over the thing it's all secure. The important thing is to really think it through before you make that first cut. |
| I learned much from all of your posts,thanks a lot. |