This old bed

There's been a big change in our house in the past week. REALLY big. We got a new bed.

When my family moved to South Africa from Zimbabwe in 1984, my parents invested in a new Sealey double bed that was very good. So good that until last Monday it was still in service, 26 years later!

Trouble is, a 26 year old bed does tend to start showing its age.

In fact, here's the state it was in.

Mattress: slightly collapsed no matter how often you turned it.

Base - more so!  In fact, we'd had to "pad" it with planks under the mattress to avoid falling toward the middle on getting in:

You can see how low the sides had begun to sink...

As a result we were waking up with sore backs, trouble breathing (who knows how many kilos of dead dust mites that thing was harbouring), horrible restless nights and all that stuff.  In addition, poor Favourite Man had his feet constantly hanging off the end, being rather taller than most.

And then a knight in shining armour flitted over the horizon - or rather a great bloke by the name of Wynand who works for a bed manufacturer down the road! :-)  We ordered an extra-length bed and picked it up literally hot off the line a week or so later - long enough to accommodate Favourite Man's toes at night, and with a sturdy memory foam mattress and brand new 6-footed base!  (Late night shot post-installation, so a bit on the yellow side)

Wow.

What a difference.

Firstly, the thing is HUGE.  I feel like the Princess (minus the Pea) having to climb up it to get into bed at night!  It's no wider than the last one, but both mattress and base are considerably thicker.  It's also a lot firmer - great for Favourite Man, taking some adjustment for me (first few nights were like sleeping on a plank but we're getting there).  Being foam, there's no moving of the entire sleeping platform like a waterbed when someone turns over or gets up, so we tend to sleep more solidly.

This is the first non cheap-sponge-and-pine-slats new bed I've ever had.  And such good quality that I suspect it's going to outlive it's predecessor.

So what happened to the old one?  Unfortunately it had one final trip in the trailer... to the dump.  Perhaps it's been rehomed by someone who sees it as a step up in the world (I like to think so), perhaps not.

End of an era.