As I've mentioned a couple of times over the last few days, our new mattress arrived last Thursday. It came in the box you see on the right. It was in sous-vide packaging (vacuum-packed). We had to take it out of the box, pierce and cut away the plastic the mattress was wrapped in, and watch and listen while it "self-inflated," re-expanding to its actual size — 2 meters by two meters by 24 centimeters (that's about 79" wide, 79" long, and 9½" thick).
We left the new mattress on the floor, on a clean rug and covered in a sheet, until yesterday (Sunday) morning because the manufacturer recommended letting it keep exanding for 24 to 36 hours, and for another reason I'll come to later...*
Meanwhile, we continued sleeping on our 25-year-old Simmons Beautyrest mattress (not a Sealy as I mistakenly said earlier) over the weekend. We slept on the new mattress last night, and I found it pretty comforatble. I'll see what Walt thinks of it when he gets up in about an hour.
This is the new mattress re-expanding on the floor, covered with a sheet. Now the old mattress is there on the floor and the new one is on the bed. We don't want to try to take the old mattress downstairs before we are sure we like and want to keep the new one.
We held our breath as we lifted the new mattress onto the platform bed frame yesterday morning, fearing it might be too big. It fit perfectly, though, as you can see. The new extra-large fitted sheet we had ordered for it fit perfectly too. Unfortunately, when the XL mattress pad that we ordered for the new mattress arrived, we discovered that the vendor had sent the wrong size. I had to send it back because it was too small.
Above is a photo of our espace chambre (bedroom area) up in the loft that I took just before we stripped the bed and moved the old mattress. The doorway you see opens into the half-bath we had put in upstairs in 2019.
While we were lifting the new mattress up onto the bed platform, we stood the old one up against a wall. It wasn't in such bad shape, really. But 25 years old... I looked up Simmons Beautyrest mattresses on an American website yesterday and saw that the king-size models cost something like $2,200.00. Yikes!
So here it is, cleans sheets and all. The flat sheets and comforter covers we already had fit it just fine. We ordered a couple of fitted sheets in the new, larger size, and now that we see we are happy with them, we'll order at least one more. That should hold us for a while.
And here's a link to the same information in French on Amazon France.
P.S. The other reason we kept the mattress on the floor and continued sleeping on the old one for a couple of nights is that one of the animals — we don't know if it was the cat or the dog — jumped up on the new mattress Thursday night... and peed on it! Bad cat! Or bad dog! They are both tight-lipped about which one did it. We carefully cleaned the mattress with an Oxyclean-type product, and then with a mild bleach solution, and let it dry for an extra 24 hours. Why do these things always happen? Both animals are otherwise perfectly house-broken. It's not as bad as it could be, however. When the old mattress was brand-new back in the mid-1990s, the bottom of it got soaked in skunk juice. That's a long story. It took us weeks to get the awful smell out of it.
!!!! to your P.S.!!!!
ReplyDeleteAnimals, eh! What are they thinking?
DeleteDo you think it could be a matter of territory? I supect it is the cat, but we'll never know.
DeleteNo, there's no way to know. Neither Tasha nor Bertie has done un pipi in the house in years. The worst they do now is upchuck once in a while. No poops indoors. We'd never had a mattress on the floor before, so somebody must have been confused by it.
DeleteMy brother-in-law bought a new mattress, set it up, wasn't sleeping on it, and his dog peed on it, too (just like your situation, the dog was house trained and never peed on things inside). So... who knows who, and who knows why!
DeleteI agree about territory. Something new in the house, and one of the animals wanted to mark it as his/her territory. But the only way to be sure is ask the animals.
DeleteThe dog peed on it just once, I hope.
DeleteHow funny! I think it was the cat- a christening for sure.
DeleteThe mattress was something new in the environment. Great Metro Map, I live a 10-minute walk from the Huntington Station, the south end of the Yellow line.
ReplyDeleteWalt has had that map for maybe 30 years and had it mounted on a board many years ago. We lived in D.C. at 2nd and E street on Capitol Hill from early 1983 until late 1986. Walt worked for a member of Congress and I worked at the U.S, Information Agency.
Deletesorry about the pee....cat pee smells worse in my opinion so u might have been able to tell that way...in any case, I suspect marking too
ReplyDeleteYeah, I suspect Tasha did it because the peepee didn't smell strong enough to be cat pee. Maybe Tasha "marked" the new mattress to keep Bertie from beating her to it.
DeleteBy the way, as soon as we saw the wet spot on the sheet we'd put over the mattress, we started cleaning it up and then put a plastic tarp over the mattress under the blue sheet. No more signs of marking after that first one.
ReplyDeleteWell, now that everyone has 'reviewed' it, I hope you all enjoy it for many years.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I like your bedside tables.
ReplyDeleteI have a post about those. I'll try to find it.
DeleteThere are photos and an explanation on the 30 september 2010 post.
DeleteYe gods, you don't have much luck with new mattresses!
ReplyDeleteMy old poodle Sandy peed on a friend's bed when I went round for dinner one evening. He just went upstairs, did it and came back down with a smug look on his face. I was mortified.
How awful (she said, laughing out loud!)
DeleteMary in Oregon
So far, so good, Ken. But now I'm wondering how you guys get the old mattress downstairs? Will it fit through the stairs? Good luck!
ReplyDeleteWe think we'll be able to drop it down the stairwell. We got it up here 10 years ago; there has to be a way to get it out.
DeleteHow are you going to dispose of the old mattress?
ReplyDeleteGood question. In pre-pandemic days, the local waste disposal service had a cumbersome-objects pickup date ever October. Now we don't know when that service will start up again. For the next xx months, we'll just keep the old mattress in the garage, while we wait.
DeleteHave you considered your donation enterprise - Er_ _ _ _? I cannot remember the name you have told us. Here, the St. Vincent De Paul organization has found a way to recycle mattresses! Maybe you will be lucky and they will even come pick it up.
DeleteMary in Oregon
I wonder if they'd be interested in a mattress as old as that one. The organization is called Emmaüs [ay-mah-yuce]. I guess I'll have to ask them.
DeleteHere in Maine some people will just put out a mattress on the street with a "Free" sign on it. It's unlikely that anyone would take it, although I assume it eventually disappears. I think here the city eventually disposes of things like that.
DeleteWe did things that way in San Francisco too. The reality here is that we live on what is basically a dead-end road. There is almost no through traffic — nobody just happening through.
DeleteIs that a quilt in the first photo? I like it a lot!
ReplyDeleteE., do you mean the picture showing the box with the mattress in it? That's a 25-year-old rug we now have on the floor down in the entryway.
DeleteSome coincidence! We had 2 90x200 mattresses-in-a-box delivered last week. Amazing how they fit in a relatively small box and how they then sort of self-inflate, isn't it? :) I hope you're going to like yours as much as we like ours! BTW, I think it must have been Tasha that peed on it; mainly because you said it didn't smell so strong. Gotta love 'em, right? :))
ReplyDeleteFunny coincidence. I won't even tell you about the animal adventure I had this morning...
DeleteYour "new" bedroom looks great!
ReplyDeleteAnd that was some Pee-S (sorry).
It looks kind of spare and spartan to me, but at least it's now cleaner than it was. Part of putting the new mattress on the bed was taking the bed half-way apart and cleaning well all around and under it.
Delete