After more than two weeks of sleeping on the floor, we were officially done with it.
So we bought a bed frame. At first we considered building one ourselves, inspired by some great DIY tutorials. We also discussed getting an inexpensive metal frame and laying wooden slats across it so our mattress could sit directly on top — leaving open the option to make an upholstered headboard later. In the end, though, the four-poster bed we’d pinned to our future bedroom mood board won out.
One complication: our organic mattress is extremely thick and constructed from dense natural latex. I’ve joked that it’s heavier than thirty dead people — a dramatic image my partner always questions — but the point is the mattress is very heavy. That made us worry a standard metal frame designed for a box spring and a lighter mattress wouldn’t perform well with wood slats and our box-spring-free, extra-heavy mattress. Buying an expensive organic box spring to make a cheap metal frame work quickly stopped sounding economical, so we ruled that out too.
It would have been fun — and a little romantic — to build a bed together like some of the DIY projects we admire, but our sore backs and holiday chaos pushed us toward a quicker solution. Bed-building could wait; sleeping on the floor could not. Picture someone emphatically declaring they’re done with an exhausting situation — that’s how serious we were about ending floor-sleeping.
With holiday schedules and limited time, we ultimately bought a queen-sized white four-poster bed from Ikea. We like to call him Ed, after Ikea’s product name. Right now he’s partially assembled and waiting to be completed.
We’re optimistic he won’t be too difficult to put together and that he can support our hefty mattress. We’ll post photos once he’s fully assembled and report back on how comfortable everything feels after our first night off the floor.