Kazza the Blank One

These photos have been sitting in my to be blogged folder all year.

While David was living here, we got sick of Stu's old bed.  It was a bit too small, and I found it too soft for my back.  So we'd been looking around for bed frames without much success.  In January, on impulse, we bought a mattress from Freedom.

The Mattress

It arrived a couple of weeks later.

It was a lot firmer than our last mattress which is what I really wanted, and *bigger* which we both wanted.  So we were quite happy with it and were generally sleeping pretty well (well apart from the insomnia but that's got nothing to do with the mattress ;) ).  But as the months went by, it definitely softened up.  It's nowhere near as firm as it used to be, and in fact you can see the indentations on either side of centre.  And if you roll into the centre, you can feel how firm it used to be.  It also means you can't sleep in certain places because otherwise you're on a tilt.  So in the end I've been disappointed with it.  I guess that's what you get for buying furniture at Freedom.

The Frame

In the middle of last year we went to Ikea and a bunch of bed stores but didn't find anything that we really liked.  At the beginning of January we had another look at Ikea and places in the Canberra Outlet Centre.  We saw one bed at Ikea that we thought might have suited.  But I read some reviews online and I'm glad I did because one of them noted the frame is actually smaller than standard mattress sizes by several centimetres.  David also pointed out that a frame where you need to dig your fingers down the side and under the mattress sucks donkey balls, and I had to agree, especially with a much heavier mattress. I also didn't want to have a foot board, because Stu's last bed had one, and I always worried about banging my leg on it in the dark.

So I spent ages and ages and ages searching online for frames.  I finally found something that I liked at MyDeal.  Except review sites gave the company pretty scathing reviews, noting that if anything goes wrong you've got almost no hope of getting in contact with them or any getting any response out of them.  So I kept looking.  I found the exact same thing at eliving furniture (not linking to their site because it kills your cpu).  They also got pretty bad reviews.  The next thing I found that might work was from Koala.  We kind of liked the easy to assemble design although I did worry that it would squeak.  I also didn't like that you wouldn't be able to move it out to vacuum behind it (if you picked up the base it'd just come off).  It was also three times the price.  Next I found the Cali frame again but this time at Kogan.  At least I've heard of Kogan so I would have been ok to get it from them.  But then Stu got a targeted Instagram ad for a very similar thing from Eva.  It was definitely more expensive, but the company looked good, and we considered it might be a case of "you get what you pay for". 

So we went with the one from Eva.  They said it would take like five business days, but it actually came really quickly, and I wasn't home like I'd been planning to be.  

But.

Their packaging is crap, and a couple of corners had been damaged in transit from either it moving around and tearing the sticky tape holding it in, or someone dropped it.  Either way I was appalled that we'd paid a whole lot of extra money only to have it damaged in transit because their packaging was so bad.  Far out, even Ikea does quality packaging.  If I'm paying hundreds of dollars extra, surely they could afford some decent packaging.

This is what greeted me when I got home.  Pathetic!!

The little flap of cardboard wasn't even attached at this point, it just came off

Well this can't be good

Two pieces were damaged

We didn't know how they'd look once assembled, so we assembled it.

Unfortunately the worst damage is in fact visible on the bottom left there because that piece is facing up.  Its only saving grace is that it's usually covered by linen.

With the mattress on top

Then we found the next problem - the head board is not sturdy at all.  It's held on with three screws, and it wobbles.  Significantly.  You can make it wobble back and forth by a couple of centimetres with just one finger.  In fact if I leaned on it to read I was worried it would snap screws or shred the timber. 

So I complained. 

To their credit, the customer service from Eva was actually pretty good.  The guy called me up to talk about it and really did try to make things right.  If I'd wanted I could have returned the whole bed (which I might have done had I not destroyed all the cardboard trying to keep the house tidy), but he did offer send a tightening and spacing kit, and did give me $100 back (should have asked for more).  Eventually the kits came.  There were three long screws, I assume longer than the original ones, which maybe might have helped, but by this time I was over it.  And the spacing kits were three chunky adjustable spacers that you stick to the bed head, and they lean against the wall.  I really didn't want to do that either.  So I just don't lean on the bed head.  Oh well.

Ultimately I do like the look of the frame, and it was super easy to put together (and will be easy to pull apart if need be, even if they did have a mistake in their lettering of the boards).  Not having a foot board is good for my legs in the dark, although the bed covers do tend to slide off the end.

The Linen

In June last year, after covid lockdowns had eased and on our first outing, I bought some king sized sheets from Target (since we were then going to be going to look for beds and wanted to make sure I had some ready).  They were Tencel fibre which I'd never heard of, but it felt soft, so bought them.  Eventually we got to use them.  They are *very* soft, in fact too soft - they don't have any sort of structural integrity, so feels almost like liquid.  I find them annoying, but Stu likes them.  Annoyingly they pilled up immediately, although that has settled down somewhat.

Once we bought the mattress I did a couple of trips to Target/Harris Scarfe to find more sheets and a doona and doona cover.  I got a fairly lightweight feather doona (mostly feathers not down - so we can use it in summer, and I usually add a second single doona in winter) from Harris Scarfe.  Then I found a nice doona cover at Target, but it was grey not blue.  So bought some grey cotton sheets from Target as well - much nicer than the tencel ones.

And so here we are!

And yet I still prefer the spare bed.  Le sigh.