Now he knows for sure

A couple of weeks ago, we got a new-ish mattress from my parents.  They had decided to buy adjustable beds, and the not-new but not-old temperpedic was to be disposed of.  I asked if we could have it - and we got it!  It came with frame and boxsprings, so after a quick debate with myself, I decided it was time to get rid of the platform bed.  We'd had it for a long time (about 12 years) and have moved it five times, so I'm an expert at taking it apart and putting it back together.  I dismantled it to it's least apart state that was still easily moved and carried it downstairs.  I got the moving men to bring the mattress down.

I listed the bed on Craigslist with the mattress being optional.  We'd had to bend it to get it upstairs when we moved here and I think we did some damage - it wasn't very comfortable.  But if the bed buyer needed a mattress, they were welcome to it.

Well, someone did buy the platform bed but didn't want the mattress, which is what I was secretly hoping for.  You see, I have a couple of chairs that need to be reupholstered and resprung, and that mattress was going to turn into free materials for me to experiment with reupholstering!  So very carefully, I began the process of dismantling the mattress:

First, I cut around the "pillow top" layer.  I pulled back the fabric that covered it, which was thinly padded and quilted.  I trimmed that all around and folded it up.

What was under it was a foam pad, much like you would buy to put on top of your bed from Wal-Mart or somewhere.  Very interesting!

After removing the foam pad, I found another thinner pad under that which was about a half to three-quarters inch thick, covered by a very thin facing of some sort.  I pulled the facing off as it was pretty much useless. 

I then rolled up the thinner foam pad and found this weird, pressed fabric underneath.  It kind of reminded me of carpet pad, except it was very thin, like thin-sweater thin.  This was attached directly to the frame of the mattress, which turned out to be rigid steel wire rather than wood.

See how some of the color transferred to the underside of the foam pad?  It actually looks pretty cool!

It took some doing to figure out how to get the carpet pad layer off. 

There were incredibly tough little steel rings holding it onto the frame and that layer was a lot tougher than it looked!  I thought to cut a slit into the ring from the side, but that really didn't work.  So I cut through it inside the ring and left a rim of carpet pad layer around the sides.

I discovered that the individual springs I was hoping for didn't actually exist in this mattress.  The entire spring system was one big wire, bent and twisted around itself to form the body of the mattress with coiled wires running across the top from one end of the bed to the other.

This posed a bit of a dilemma for me, as I was really hoping to harvest some springs to respring at least one chair.  I thought maybe I could cut out a section and it would hold its integrity, but I didn't have any tools (other than an ancient bold cutter) that were strong enough to cut through.  I decided not to try to use the steel wire but to recycle it instead.

I could stand it up and get what was on the backside though!  I cut away the very sturdy, almost vinyl-like layer from the underside of the mattress.  It was a "no-turn" mattress, so it wasn't finished the same way on the top and the bottom.  The bottom side was strictly utilitarian.  Under that, I found another foam pad layer, which was about an inch and a half to two inches thick.  I pulled that out too!

Beneath the foam layer, I found more of the carpet-pad type material.  As much as I wanted to get that off too, it's really tough and hard to cut and I was getting tired at this point...  I left it on the frame.

Not done yet, though!  All the way around the sides was another thinly padded, quilted strip of material with thick piping on either side.  I was sure I could find a use for that, so off it came!

I removed it all in one piece, so I have a nice long strip of this material that I can cut to length in the future.  I left the piping on it as well, instead of removing it and having to store it separately.

And this is the pile of salvaged material!  It's quite a lot, but I'm sure I can put it all to good use.  I carried the steel frame and spring system out to the side yard to wait for big item pickup day or for Darling Man to take it to either the recycler or the county landfill recycling. 

When Darling Man came home, he looked at the bits of fluff and debris scattered around the livingroom and the pile of materials in the family room and shook his head.  I asked if he thought I was crazy for doing this.  He thought a moment, then said yes...  but at least I was creatively crazy.  He never knew just what was going to happen next.