My oldest son moved out of the house about a month ago and I'm struggling a little bit with partial empty nest syndrome. I call it partial because he only moved 5 minutes down the road and I still have a son, a husband, a cat and a dog at home, so my nest isn't completely empty.
I spent a lot of time out at his new place helping him remodel, paint and decorate. We painted all of the walls and cabinets, updated the bathroom completely and made a butcher block table to extend the kitchen prep space. We were busy! But, the makeover came to a screeching halt when he suddenly loaded up his bed and dresser and moved into the new place before it was ready. And before I was ready. I wanted everything to be just perfect and it's not and never will be because he won't let me back in to finish!
Anyway, now I have his old bedroom that needs to be refurnished. I recently painted the walls and the trim and hung new blinds, so it's not terrible, but I needed to replace the bed. At first I thought I'd just make an office or workroom out of the space. I was going to put my sewing machine in there and some nifty shelves and maybe a book nook. Big plans! But, I just kept thinking that I should have a bed available for him if he wanted to come back home, even for just a day or two. Or even for just a nap.
So, I ordered a platform bed frame and another Zinus Green Tea Mattress for his room because my youngest son loves his Zinus mattress and because my niece has actually bought 3 of them! In fact, she told me about the Zinus Green Tea Mattress last year when I was searching for a new mattress.
I ordered a sturdy, wooden Zinus platform bed frame and a Zinus Green Tea memory foam mattress for the new spare room. This is the first wooden platform bed frame that I've bought. Our other Zinus mattress is on one of those metal frames that will fold up and out of the way, I could have gotten another one of those, but I wanted a wooden bed frame this time. The frame kit comes with plenty of bolts, washers and a custom tool for the assembly. The holes are all pre-drilled and instructions with pictures are included and appreciated.
Above is a picture of the instructions. Easy as 1, 2, 3. Hmmmm. Maybe not quite that easy, but it wasn't terrible. I'm not going to give a step by step tutorial on assembling the bed frame, but I will say that it was relatively easy after I deciphered the instructions for putting the corners together. The pieces are 'labeled' 1 and 2, but it seemed to me that 1's could be 2's and 2's could be 1's! I enlisted my husband to help with this project. He had to help because he had already said that he didn't have any plans, and I guess he couldn't come up with a good excuse really fast.
After we got the corners together the rest was pretty smooth sailing. I snapped some pictures to share and I've added some brief descriptions.
The tool that you see here came with the frame, so if you don't own any tools whatsoever you can still put this bed frame together.
The cross boards for this frame come attached to a velcro strip that matches up to a velcro strip that's stapled to the bed frame. That's part of my husbands hand. It looks strange to me.
Some of the cross boards have pre-drilled holes that align with wooden dowels along the frame.
Those are my chubby toes in the corner,
The inspector dropped in to check on our project. She was impressed.
We finished assembling the bed frame in less than an hour, including reading the instructions and arguing a little about the best way to proceed. We could put another one of these frames together in 20 minutes flat. I'm sure of it.
The next step was to "inflate" the mattress.
The mattress was vacuum sealed and rolled up in thick plastic inside a large cardboard box. All we had to do is pull it out of the box, unroll it and carefully cut away the plastic. The mattress started filling with air immediately and it was basically completely expanded in a few hours. The corners and edges took a little longer to take shape.
This is the outside of the box,
The mattress was vacuum sealed, folded and rolled up.
This is just after we pulled it out of the box and unfolded it.
The mattress instantly started "filling with air".
I'm not finished with the room, but I did manage to put covers on the bed so I'd be ready for overnight company.
The platform bed frame is very sturdy, just like the reviews said, and it's a solid frame and doesn't creek or squeak. The frame is well made. The slats are made out of hard wood and are heavy duty and placed close enough together for full support. I have to say that the bed frame, assembly parts for the frame and the mattress are top quality and I wouldn't hesitate to buy them again.
After we got the bed assembled, I got to work making up the bed. I went through a few bedding arrangements before I settled on this look and I could have easily spent a few more hours working on it. I decided to use white duvets, without duvet covers, and gray sheets. (Read my post about why duvets are better than comforters.) I already had all of the bedding that you see here except for the pillow cases. I used the lightly printed pillow cases, the heavy striped throw pillow and the fuzzy textured throw to bring the look together. I'm happy with it for now, but I like to change things up pretty often.