New (Old) Wooden Bed

Some time last year (I can't remember exactly when it was), I spied a lovely old wooden bed frame at our local auction house (Lawrences of Crewkerne, in case you're interested.) I thought it would be perfect for DC so I left a commission bid of about £60. Lady Luck was on my side at that particular auction as I won it for the princely sum of £22. Yes, just 22 of those good old English pounds. Bargain. 

Hubby brought it home and it sat in the garage for a goodly while as DC was still sleeping in his cot bed.

Then in June he progressed to his 'big boy' bed; except he couldn't use the lovely wooden frame I'd bought as we couldn't figure out how on earth a mattress was actually going to rest on the frame. You see, I hadn't considered this small, but rather significant fact when I'd got all over-excited at the auction. When the frame was dismantled and we gave it a cursory glance over, hubby and I had assumed that the metal side pieces would accommodate slats on which the mattress would rest. However, when the bed was assembled we could see that, although they are L-shaped, the metal side bars actually fix in the manner of an upside-down L  (sort of like this ┐), which meant there was nowhere for slats to rest. And so we sort of gave up for a while. The frame sat in the spare bedroom for a few weeks.

And then some friends asked if they could come and stay, which meant we needed both of our spare rooms and that galvanised me into action. I did a little searching on the old t'interweb using the term "old-fashioned wooden beds" and finally discovered just what an old-fashioned bed like this needs in order to accommodate a mattress - it needs a bed base. As luck would have it there's a place just about a ten-minute drive from us which sells them and, as luck would have it again, at the lowest price I had found during my interweb searches.

A couple of phone calls later, a quick trip along the A303, and hubby came home with this ticking-covered beauty from Wessex Beds. And we were almost ready to go.

A week later the mattress arrived from lovely John Lewis, and it was time to move the bed frame into DC's room.

Pop the bed base on.

Add the mattress. 

Test for bounce-ability.

Put the favourite duvet cover on.

And sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Night night. Sleep tight. Don't let the (old-fashioned) bed bugs bite.