When I was in college, my dad worked for a company that had a
relationship with a mattress-maker. He was able to get products
from them at a good discount, so when I “officially” grew out of
my childhood twin-sized bed, he got me a Queen mattress. It was
awesome!

Fast-forward 10 years… Married for a couple of years, and still
sleeping on that same mattress. My back started to hurt a few
mornings per week; and with the sheets off, there was a noticable
dip in the middle of the mattress.

Time to to mattress shopping!

Both Arti and I immediately had three ideas: “Dux Bed”, “pillow
top”, and “memory foam”. So off to the web to do some shopping…

The nearest Dux store was a 45 minute drive from here, and their
beds were several thousand dollars. Too much effort at this
point. A good pillow-top mattress was at least a thousand
dollars, most are fifteen hundred. A “Tempur-Pedic” memory foam
mattress ran anywhere from two to three thousand dollars. I found
some knock-off memory foam mattresses, but those were a thousand
to fifteen hundred dollars.

Then I found it — an online store claiming to make a mattress
identical to the Tempur-Pedic “Celebrity” bed (their
top-of-the-line model), with a detailed diagram of the different
layers of foam, right down to the density and type of each one.

Oh yes … This got me thinking — maybe I could just make my own!
I had been to “Bob’s Foam Factory” in Fremont in high school to
get some padding for a watertight camera box (really a 50 caliber
U.S. Army ammo box), so I figured there’s gotta be some place to
get the right kinds of foam.

Bob’s Foam Factory didn’t carry
memory foam, so I couldn’t give them some more business. However,
some searching did come up with a few places that did carry it.

I settled on Foam
Factory Inc. / Foam Distributing / economyfoam.com (ya, all
three names are on the site in some place or another). They had
it all, and the prices were pretty good. They were running a free
shipping offer too, so there ya go.

Here’s what I ordered (from the top surface of the mattress to the
bottom layer):

• $95 MF4Q62
  Memory Foam 4.3LB - Queen - 60″x80″x 2″
• $182 MF5Q63
  Memory Foam 5.3LB - Queen - 60″x80″x 3″
• $34 LRFE82
  Lux Regular Foam - Eggcrate - 82″x76″x 2-1/2″
• $114 LHQFFS84
  Lux High Qual. Foam - Full Sheet - 82″x76″x 4″

Total price, shipped, was less than $450.

To ship the foam, they wrap it in plastic in some sort of vacuum
chamber. The big 4″ thick bottom piece came in a box only about 1.5
feet on a side. I opened the box, then rolled out this
plastic-wrapped ball of highly compressed foam. I poked it a bit
with an X-Acto knife, and this hissing and groaning sound filled
the house. It started to grow. After a minute or so, there was
this big ol’ rectangular piece of foam in the middle of the living
room.

The memory foam takes a lot longer to decompress — a couple hours
at least. Just make sure you have a place to set it (on the floor
where the bed will be, hmm?) so that it can expand unfettered.

Since only the memory foam pieces were cut to a Queen size, I
had to cut the others. I had a bunch of ideas, from carving at it with
an X-Acto knife to getting my Skil Saw out and making a mess of
it. I eventually compromised and used a serrated bread knife and
a long board as a straightedge. It worked fine.

So with all the layers cut to the right size, it was just a matter
of stacking them up on the bed platform. The foam is pretty
grippy, so it doesn’t need to be glued or attached to one another.

The cool thing about making your own mattress is that you can
really customize the density of the foam according to what you
like. I picked a medium density top layer for the “cozy factor”, and
a higher density second layer for support. The eggcrate provides
a breathing channel to help maintain a good temperature. The
bottom layer is just to prevent the mattress from “bottoming out”
in case you decide to do pushups on it or something (your fists
would fully compress the memory foam and touch the bed frame
without the thick, firm layer underneath).

The first night was awesome — the memory foam material is just
super comfortable — it holds you nicely, and it maintains a
pleasant temperature. I woke up the next morning with a happy
back — and it’s stayed back pain free for the 9 months since we put
the mattress together.

I’d like to make a slip cover for the whole thing, but a normal
mattress pad has been working just fine. Maybe one day…

So all in all, a good move. The foam should last at least as long
as a normal mattress (10+ years, 25 years for a couple of the
layers).

ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz………….

UPDATE May 12, 2008 — the top layer of memory foam (the lightweight one) has given up the ghost and lost its mind. The other layers of foam are still in great shape, so we’re rolling without the thin one. Comfortable once again!