Bye Bye Box Spring

When Patrick and I first got married, we decided to just buy a mattress and a box spring, and not a very expensive set at that. It turns out, it didn't even have springs in the box spring. If you ask me, that kind of defeats the purpose. The picture to the left is the only picture I took of it, it seems. In any case, it is gone now. Here is it's story.

Back just before David was born, all his baby stuff began to clutter our one bedroom. As a solution, I designed a bed frame, and then Patrick and I built it. It was designed to have the box spring placed on top, and since the bed was designed to have enough clearance underneath for a large box of diapers, this put the top of the mattress a ways in the air.


Fast forward to recently, when David has an apparent death wish. If I put him on the bed, even before I let go, he is immediately turning over and army crawling to the edge of the bed in an attempt to dive off. Of course, I don't leave him on the bed by himself, but I still worried about how high the bed was. I caught him on the way down a bit ago and decided that something needed to be done.

I had been thinking about my plan for a while, so I had already examined the box spring from the outside. It seemed to have a piece of cardboard over the top of some wooden slats as the top where the mattress rests. I concluded that the top of the box spring should probably be enough to support the bed since many beds are just made with slats in the first place. Thus, I planned to just remove the rest of the box spring.

That Saturday, we enacted my plan. Step number one was to remove the bottom piece of fabric that they put on any kind of furniture that is covered in fabric. As far as I can tell, it is flimsy and serves no purpose except to trap dust. It tore right off, and Patrick and I decided this was going to be even easier than we had anticipated as soon as we saw the inside. Until that point, I had had worried slightly that it was going to be a bit more work that I thought.

I slit the fabric on the sides down about 2 inches from the top all the way around. Then we (and by we I really mean Patrick since I just kept David off the floor mostly) used a hammer and a screw driver to pry the top off the 15 2 x 4 type legs. We then glued the fabric down around the outside with gorilla glue (we still haven't purchased that staple gun). After the glue dried, we just set it back on the bed frame.

It is no less comfortable or sturdy, and I no longer have to step on the bed frame to get into bed. Also, I just think it looks nicer and, since it isn't as tall, it makes the room look bigger. As for the excess wood we took off, I have plans.