Ingenuity saves the day....or I mean night.

Every marriage has their share of frivolous problems. Not deal breakers or anything important, just minor irritants that grate along the way. We've had 2 related "problems" since moving back to VA. The first: we gave away our queen sized bed frame/unit before leaving AL. We weren't sure where we were going or what would fit in the moving van, so we erred on the generous side and gave a bunch away. We kept our queen top mattress and have been sleeping on the floor since end of last July. Minor irritant #1: wifey doesn't like to sleep on the floor, and does she like the 'freshly moved' look. Nor is it good to sleep on the floor when you suffer a knee injury from biking (me), a car wreck that hurts your back/neck (still me) or when you're weak from a SIX WEEK recovery period from pneumonia/blood infection (hubby).

Finally, in January, we found a nice king size bed frame at a consignment store. It's nice looking, yet manly enough and we scheduled a time to pick it up. We couldn't afford a king mattress now, but we were at least moving in the right direction, right? Well, we went to pick it up and they said, "Oh Yeah, the mattress conveys." Yippee!! I thought this was an answer to my prayers until I laid down on it. I've slept on rocks that are softer. My hubby was in heaven! He said the seemingly brick lined mattress helped his back and gave him better sleep than he's had in years. So now, he slept on the king bed and I was still on the queen mattress on the floor. This went on for 4 months! Minor irritant #2: We both hate having 2 beds in our room, but we hate being tired even more.

So last Friday night, while we were discussing what to do about our 9 month long mattress conundrum and our lack of extra money to fix it, I half jokingly said, "It's too bad you can't cut my squishy queen bed and your rock solid king and make one king size mattress with two equal parts."

...............5 seconds of silence...........

His eyes got "that look" and I knew I had struck gold. The next day, my hubby spent about 8 hours hand cutting our mattresses and fitting them back together with a custom industrial sewing job. This took a lot of precision and patience, but the end result was 2 equal sized mattresses on one frame. And it simultaneously fixed Minor Irritant #3: I'm a bed hog. Hubby swears I take 75% of any shared bed. Now there is a definite line where my side ends.

So, after months on end, last night we both finally got to sleep in a comfortable bed together!! It was the best night of sleep we've had since moving here! Yay for ingenuity saving our backs and our wallets. Now we're taking suggestions about how to BEST USE for all the leftover parts. We've had many good suggestions~~ like moon shoes, rocket launchers and the like. I'm sure there will be a "post mattress" post sometime this summer. We tend to get really creative when the kids are out of school.

Or perhaps we'll incorporate it somehow into Punkin Chunkin' 2012?
Time will tell. Blessings!

Picture 1: Travis enjoying the fruits of his labor after a Sunday hike!

Picture 2: some of the extra parts!