King Me!

It has taken over 8 years and sleeping in every other size bed (yes we had a few years where we slept in a twin) to finally reach this point. As of a couple of weeks ago, we are the official owners of a king size bed. Since we have been wanting this for awhile (you'd be shocked at how much space two, under 20 lb, dogs can take up) it shouldn't surprise you that it took us a lot of looking around before we made a purchase. In fact, I think we may have looked at almost every mattress retailer in our area.

One reason we looked around a lot was price. We initially were only going to get a mattress and build a platform bed for it and we didn't want to spend more than $800 for the whole deal. This meant we were in the fairly unrealistic price region for a decent king size bed (aka not hard as rocks). After a lot of looking around, we were fairly settled on a pillow top mattress from a mom and pop place in town. The mattress wasn't name brand (there is a mattress maker in a neighboring town) but it was really comfortable and at $500 it was in our budget. 

Even though we were fairly certain we wouldn't find a better deal, I wanted to check a few more places. That's how we ended up at Big Lots. I didn't know that they sold mattresses but I saw an ad and decided it was worth checking out. When we went, they were selling one type of king mattress (more of other sizes) and they were all out except for the floor model. It was a Serta perfect sleeper super pillow top mattress and I liked it better than the other one (Nate says a bed feels like a bed so it came down to what I thought) but it was $790 and you can't make a bed frame for $10. Out of curiosity Nate asked how much they would sell the floor model for. They knocked it down a bit but not enough so we walked out and went to a few more places. After talking it over more (comfort level, cleaning it since it was the floor model, and logistics of getting it home) we decided to go back and see if they would come down any more. 

Nate the negotiator talked to the sales guy while I looked around the rest of the store and after a bit of talking, he got them down to $600. We were sold at that point and what we didn't realize is that the $600 was for the mattress and box spring (the combo was being sold for $1000) and came with a 10 year warranty so if we didn't have to worry if we had issues with the mattress. After paying (and buying a $5 thing of rope) they helped Nate get everything on the top of our little Honda Fit (I wish I had gotten a picture but somewhere online there is one since a woman took forever to pass us on our way home since she was taking a picture on her phone) and we drove very slowly home.

Another thing that kept us from buying a mattress sooner was the size. We weren't sure if a king would be too wide for our room and seriously considered going for a California King. We ended up with a regular king and I'm really glad we did. The mattress fits in the space really nicely and we really like the height of the bed with the mattress just sitting on the box springs (Madeline can actually jump up on it at this height). This made us decide to not build a bed frame, just a headboard. Instead, I bought a set of tan flannel sheets and covered the box spring with the fitted sheet. We'll use the flat sheet to make the headboard.

So we were able to get the mattress (and frame) within our budget, we were able to get it home and it fit in the room. That meant the only thing left to do was clean it. That's where my favorite new cleaning tool came into play. 

This thing has been a life saver since I got it a couple of months ago (let's just say there was a dog/car incident that the car would not have recovered from without this). I've used it all over the house and so it definitely was the tool I went to for cleaning the mattress. It took about a half a hour and a little elbow grease to clean the entire thing but after letting it dry for a couple of hours it was all fresh and clean! We also got a mattress pad to protect everything. 

We've been sleeping on it for a couple of weeks now and I love it. I haven't taken full advantage of all the space yet (the dogs do though) since I still have that huge body pillow for my hips but I'm looking forward to really spreading out once I can get rid of it.