As life does, our list of things to do continues to grow. First thing into your room should be the bed. In our case, I’m sure the title gave away what happened. We pulled our mattress out from our garage full of storage and found that it was too gross to even consider bringing into the house. No, I did not take a picture. But the rat goop sticking into the crevices should be a good enough visual. We’re stuck with a few tasks.

1. Get Rid of that Bed!
2. Find a New Mattress
3. Build a New Bed

Now there is an edge to all this. And that’s that I’m a little over the top about health issues and the environment and recycling and you know all the mumbo jumbo about helping the future of the human race. No big deal or anything. But it’s my thing and so I want to apply it to my project. I’m also not a millionaire yet so I can’t just buy the first thing I see. This means I’ve got to do it myself.

STEP 1. GETTING IT GONE

There are lots of ways to get rid of a mattress. You can post it on craigslist and hope that some schmuck will want it. You can take it to the dump, which is a really great burden on our landfills. Or you can do some off the wall rioting and burn it. None of those seemed my style. Instead I strapped it to the top of the van and took it to (Eco-cycle)[http://www.ecocycle.org/charm]. The architectural salvage yard that I used to work at partners with Eco-cycle so I knew about their mattress recycling program. For $39, I was able to get rid of my mattress and box spring knowing that it was going to be recycled. I’m not sure how they do that exactly but it makes me feel fuzzy inside anyways. And I didn’t have to visit the dump which is a horrifying place to go and see how much waste us humans produce.
Step 1 complete.

STEP 2. THE QUEST FOR A NEW MATTRESS

I’ve know that I want something different. I mean by now most of us know about all the chemicals our mattresses are sprayed with to be fire retardant and mold resistant and all that stuff and well if there’s another option than why not do that? Well because it’s expensive! Geez I mean seriously expensive. $2000 for a mattress expensive. And maybe it’s worth it. But who can afford that? Not I. Even if I was rich I wouldn’t want to spend that. So what are the options?

I did some research into making my own mattress out of straw or wool and can be honest with myself. I just think that is over my head. I’m no seamstress. That’s not gonna go well with all the other shit I have to do. So the next options that come up are looking into different styles of beds. I checked out rope beds and layered wool beds and some trippy bubble beds but wasn’t convinced. And then I started looking into floor sleeping. I think it’s a Japanese invention, on tatami mats. I found this gangster article about floor sleeping by Petra Fisher Movement and learned that it might just be the thing for us (really do check it out it’s interesting). I mean we just spent the last year on a mattress that is only an inch thin in the van and is laid on top of a sheet of plywood. I slept. Pretty well too. So firm mattresses aren’t an issue.

After a look at Petra’s suggestions I followed the rabbit hole until I landed on this

We wanted a low price, but good materials, no chemicals, a queen, and not too thin. This was all of these. It was on Amazon which is another place you can use cryptos. Again, we didn’t get to. But we did order the mattress with free shipping and it’ll be here soon. It was only $370 which is a lot but not anywhere near $2000!

Other options were either really expensive, not the materials we wanted (wool and cotton) or were too thin and didn’t come in the queen size.

STEP 3. WHERE TO PUT IT

Since our mattress is a futon style mattress and needs to be flipped and allowed to breath, I figured we could build our own simple slatted bed. I saw this:

… on Pinterest and thought it was awesome until I followed the directions and realized I wasn’t gonna be that much of a perfectionist about it. Instead Rob and I went to Home Depot (Also available on Gyft) and got 8 – 1x8 pine boards and 2 – 2x10 sticks of dimensional lumber too. And a box of star head screws because they are the best kind. And some felt bottoms so it doesn’t scratch the floor. It came out to be something like $130 which is more than I expected. Maybe we should have sourced them used … but maybe not (visions of the wood in ratty garage come to my mind). No I don’t need used by my bed.
We brought it all home and I assembled it with some calculations and a saw, and drill, and tape measure. This is how it turned out:

The 2x10s are on the base and the 1x8s are evenly spaced on top. The top two boards as you may notice are wider so we each have a built in night stand. I imagine getting some nice slices of burl wood rounds to fit on top of those spaces but I’ll have to hunt for them. I’m also looking for a large slab of beautiful wood to upgrade our desk…

(We just got the mattress today! It took about a week and we were sleeping on a stack of blankets on top of the wood bed ... it was almost getting comfortable. But this thing is a dream!!!)

BONUS…. A 2 MINUTE 2$ DESK

We went down to our local architectural salvage yard and picked up a slab of counter top and 2 legs for 2 bucks. And created this ….

Not the cutest but it works. For now. I’ve got plans for this space.
*Check out what happened to the rest of the stuff in our garage by checking out my ongoing updates of the Garage SAGA