New King Size Kingsdown Sleep To Live Mattress Set
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009This is a humorous little story. Well, it’s humorous now that the whole little shopping ordeal is over, but it wasn’t earlier in the day yesterday.
Okay, my parents are coming up to visit. This is pretty exciting because they haven’t been to the house yet. Also, they are now southerners, so they totally forget what the North looks like…well, maybe not. Anyway, they will be here in just a few weeks and up until yesterday, they had no where to sleep.
We have been meaning to get a bed for the guest bedroom for about a year now. We really need one and every house should have one. We have already had two people stay over and they both had to sleep on the couch (one at a time). I really didn’t care that those two people slept on the couch, but I can’t expect my parents to sleep there. After all, they are very special people. You know, come to think of it…I’m still waiting for my father to come over and turn the lights on and off and on and off and jump on the couch all day. He used to threaten to do that to me when I was a kid. That’s right, he used to tell me that he was going to come over to where I was living and leave the doors wide open and the lights on all day. I guess he was trying to teach me a lesson.
Back to the bed. Buying a bed that you don’t need is probably one of the most annoying things a person can do. Beds are expensive and having an expensive bed sitting in a room that you don’t use is just ridiculous. Trust me, I thought of all different ways to get out of this. I considered getting a futon, considered getting a new bed for us and moving our old one in the guest bedroom and considered putting my parents up in a hotel. I know, I know, we needed the bed anyway. Putting them in a hotel wouldn’t solve the problem of housing future guests.
I put this project off for such a long time. It’s amazing; I am finally going to the dentist every six months, but I can’t find my way into a mattress store for the life of me. Well, yesterday was the day that we dragged ourselves out of the house and drove up to Sleepy’s in Manchester. We were just going to look, because I had a plan.
After college, when I lived in Atlanta, I wanted one thing. I wanted a real bed. I slept in some pretty bad conditions while at college and all I wanted was to sleep in a nice queen size bed with a Simmons Beautyrest mattress, just like my friend had. I liked his mattress. It had those independently pocketed coils and it was really comfortable. When I moved down south, one of the first things I did was to order that mattress. Well, 10 years came and went last year and that mattress began making our backs ache. We ordered a new mattress. Our new mattress is okay, but nothing special. It’s only a year old and is fairly comfortable.
I spent some time doing a little mattress research online before we went up to Sleepy’s. My plan was to go into the store, lay down on a good number of beds and then take off, only to buy one online. I had a hunch that I could get a bed cheaper by ordering it from 1-800-mattress or something like that. After all, I think I got the whole Simmons Beautyrest bed set from them for a little over $400 back eleven years ago. How much can they be now?
We walked into the Sleepy’s store and instantly found the Simmons Beautyrest beds. We layed down on a few of them and Laura picked out two she liked. Then, the sales guy came over. He started talking about the benefits of sleep and all that. I put my hand up to stop him before he even got started. I told him that we were only looking for a queen size bed set for a guest room. It doesn’t have to be all that great, but it does need those independently pocketed coils. I am simply hung up on them.
Oh yeah, I also told him my budget was $650. Yeah, that’s $650 I really did not want to spend.
He showed us a few of the cheaper beds. Actually, the cheapest bed set was $999 and it was pretty cheap. I thought $999 was a lot of money, but I guess it’s really not in the bedding world. Now, $8000 is a lot. If you spent a grand for a bed ten years ago, you were living like a king.
Somehow, my plan of just trying out a few beds and leaving was forgotten. I got all wrapped up in trying to negotiate a cheaper price for a cheap bed. Unfortunately, the lowest this guy would go was $999. There was nothing in the store for less.
As we were laying on all these beds in total comfort, the wheels in my mind started turning. I started picturing myself sleeping on a nice luxurious bed, like there were so many of in this particular store.
As time went on, I get the feeling that the sales guy and I were coming to some sort of an agreement about purchasing a bed set. I know he knew that I really didn’t want to spend much money, but he also saw my face when I was trying out some of the beds. I was very non-committal…I wouldn’t put my feet up. I would sort of lay halfway on the bed while trying to figure out if it was comfortable or not. There was a wide variety of comfort available.
You know, beds have come a long way these past few years. There are all sorts of pillowtop, folding, vibrating, shaking and some even have little arms that come out of the sides to rub your belly if you want. Okay, that last one was a stretch. Seriously though, some of these beds are really, really comfortable.
In Sleepy’s, there is this air mattress that the customer can lay on that is hooked to a computer. It allegedly calibrates something-or-other and spits out a piece of paper that tells you what “color” firmness or softness you are. I was a green and Laura was a blue. We were very close to one another. We probably would have picked those colors anyway because the firm mattresses are really hard and the soft ones are like couch cushions.
As time went on, we found ourselves laying more and more on the “Kingsdown- Sleep to Live” brand of mattress. There was something different about these mattresses. They provided some serious comfort. The sales guy was only too happy to discuss the benefits of the Sleep To Live brand of mattress with us.
As I lay on the queen size, semi-firm Sleep To Live mattress, I envisioned myself setting this exact bed set up in the bedroom…just not the guest bedroom. I mean, since our current mattress is only a year old, what’s the harm of sliding that into the guest bedroom and having us sleep on something new and luxurious? I mean really. The bad part was that the prices kept going higher and higher as I moved on to better mattresses.
I don’t know what came over me, but at some point in the day, I found myself asking the sales guy about the price differences between the king size bed sets and the queen. A few hundred bucks. Hmmm.
Okay guys, I am going to make a long story short and tell you that we now have a new Sleep To Live, king size mattress set, a new king size sheet set and a new bed frame set up in the bedroom…not the guest bedroom.
I always wanted a king size bed. We slept on it last night and I think it was nice. I can’t get past the part of how I feel like I don’t deserve to be laying on something so nice. I probably don’t deserve it; no one does. It’s bedding gluttony, pure and simple.
I will tell you that I did a tremendous amount of negotiating for this bed. I know certainly well that Sleepy’s is not selling too many bed sets these days and I took advantage of that. As I was going through my normal routine of chewing the guy down, he kept asking me if I wanted to finance everything. Finance it? I almost asked him if he was serious. Who in the world finances a bed? Where I come from, if you can’t afford a nice bed, you sleep on a not-so-nice one. What has this world turned into where companies offer financing for mattresses? Remember, I’m the guy who used to use a 5-gallon bucket as a chair and slept on some used mattress on the floor back in college. I mean, c’mon.
I’m back. I would offer up a picture of the new bed, but it is not made right now. Perhaps I will take a picture of it when we get a new headboard.
Over and out.
