2008-04-19

Falling asleep

Earlier this week as I went to bed, it broke beneath me. In the morning I examined the bed a bit closer and was surprised at the common-sense-defying design. The mattress, a Sultan Sturefors has a series of boards underneath, supporting the springs. These boards are simply attached with two large staples at each end. The staples have nothing in the way of barbs, grooves, or anything, they are just smooth strips of metal, parallel with the forces when someone lies in the bed. Clearly it is just a question of time before they work themselves out of the wood, and the time was now.

I requisitioned transport and brought the mattress back to IKEA, where a person in the complaints department stared at it incredulously and really didn't seem to take to heart my proposition that this was an accident just waiting to happen. There was however no question that I wouldn't get credited the price, so I went back in to retrieve instead a Sultan Storfors, which has a more sensible construction with the boards resting on a frame and thus unlikely to just drop out the bottom.

I will now proceed to test the new mattress.

7 comments:

Martin said...

I will now proceed to test the new mattress.

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink! Test that mattress, man! Go go go! Yee-haw!

kai said...

Uhm, yes. I can report that it is somewhat stiffer than the Sturefors as it lacks the extra layer of springs, but that didn't keep me from an undisturbed eight hours of sleep. It does however have a very distinct “new mattress” odour (formaldehyde?), so I'm carefully airing out the room.

Anonymous said...

That must have been some experience. I cannot imagine lying down on a bed and it just falling to the ground beneath you. I have had an experience with a chair though. It was one of those steel rod legs modern piece. The four legs just spread out flat and the seat with me on it was on ground level. A very embarrassing situation.

Anonymous said...

My friend broke her boyfriends bed the first time they... Tee-hee

Anonymous said...

Good god, this exciting stuff is really mindboggling. I happen to live in the neighbourhood of Sturefors. Haven´t seen any sultans hanging around, but a collegue of mine, born and raised in Sturefors, is named Kaliff. Do we see a connection here!?

thnidu said...

It occurs to me just now to wonder whether some idiot at the factory put that part of the frame in upside-down.

kai said...

If so, they've consistently done it for all their mattress series—I went through them all and it is only Sultan Storfors that does not have the inverse-staple construction and that apparently because it only has a single spring layer.

My only suggestion for why not more people aren't falling through their beds is that they probably place them in frames that take up the forces.