DIY Memory Foam Mattress

We finally faced the ugly truth:  my neck issue that leads me to wake up with migraines is probably exacerbated by our crummy mattress.  Once you know what your spinal problems are, you become hyper aware of your positioning.  So after seeing a chiropractor for spinal care, I knew the mattress we were sleeping on was about as supportive as Gilligan's hammock.

Though $900 for a mattress didn't seem like a poor investment at the time, I guess it was.  But here's the real shocker:  

I have since realized that the cheaper and firmer the mattress, the better.  

It does make sense when you consider that we were made to sleep on the ground, and I can't think of anything more supportive.  This means I would have felt better and saved money if I'd slept on an inexpensive, firm futon that cost $100 and replaced it every two years instead of struggling for three on a more expensive pillow top name brand.  No wonder I always sleep great on our old, second hand, pop-up camper mattress.  

My chiropractor said lots of people have reported sleeping better in their campers and that dense latex foam might be the way to go.  So, I looked up Tempur Pedic, Ikea mattresses, Natura, and other latex types; however, it's a little scary to invest a lot in something that may prove wrong for me in a couple of months.  After reading more reviews, about construction and a few "how-to" sites, I settled on The Foam Factory's most dense all natural latex mattress with a 3" 5lb. ViscoMax memory foam topper mattress.  

The mattresses were delivered in two small but crazy heavy boxes.  We sort of rolled them through the house into the bedroom and began to remove the packaging so they could unfurl.  Very weird.

We already had the hairpin legs we wanted for our soon-to-be-built (hopefully) platform bed, so my husband threw together a cheap pine platform bed in an hour, seriously, and we attached the legs to it for now.

(This is before adding slats, obviously.) 

It actually looks pretty good for unfinished wood.  After all was set up and finished, he added center supports underneath to quell my fear of the bed collapsing on our cat.  (Thank you, Dear.)  I have been sleeping on it for about two weeks and have not awoken with a migraine once.  I have only had one headache during the day and I know that was due to some stressful circumstances.   I actually wake up feeling better than when I went to bed, something that I haven't been able to say in years.

(Sorry there's no more photos, but even after vacuuming up the dog hair, my room was still a mess.)

The moment of truth, however, will be in a few months when everything has had time to sag or deteriorate a little.  I really don't think we'll have a problem with the bottom latex mattress,  but I'm glad I can customize my side of of the bed by removing the memory foam if I need to.  If all else fails, we can trash the whole thing and buy that cheap futon for our soon to be made platform bed.
Image on my Flickr.