Mattress Forum

The problem:

I have a retro 50's/60's bedroom set that I love.  The bed frame is solid wood with thick metal rails that feel like they are made of iron or steel.  They don't make furniture like that anymore.  When I got a new mattress & box spring recently, I didn't realize until I put everything on the frame how crazily bloated mattresses & box springs are these days.  I am very short, and the mattress was up so high that I could barely get into the bed.  I had to put the mattress & box spring on the floor for a while. 

This was not ideal for many reasons:

a) I love my headboard & footboard and wanted to use them.  Didn't want to have to drill holes in the frame or rig something weird up.

b) There is a heating vent that is partially under the bed frame.  The room is very small & shifting the mattress over didn't work well.

c) In a house built in 1920 and lacking a lot of closet space, under-the-bed storage is vital.

So, I decided to chop the 9-inch foundation down as much as possible.  And unlike most of my "bright" ideas, it was surprisingly easy.  To do it, I removed the fabric cover (the most annoying part of the whole process was getting all those staples out that hold the fabric on there) pryed off the long pieces of wood on the bottom and removed the wood blocks that gave the box spring its height.  Then I attached the bottom support pieces directly onto the top platform.  I put the fabric covering back over everyting & used a staple gun to re-attach it. 

The result: a 3-inch super low-profile foundation that turned my bed into a very low platform that can accomodate my 9-inch thick mattress without me needing a step stool to get into bed.  Sure, I could have gone to Home Depot and bought some wood to make this platform, but why spend the money when I had all the pieces I needed in a box spring that I wasn't going to be able to use otherwise?  Win-win!  ~Becky

(It's a little hard to see in this picture, but the thin, bright-white line is the slim foundation sitting on the bed frame rails.)