On Saturday, Mrs E and I went shopping for a new bed after putting it off for months. The old one was killing us–it looked like a topographical scale model of a canyon range, felt like sleeping on a bag stuffed with river rocks, and we almost always woke up feeling twice our physical age.

So, we went to a local mattress store, tried out a bunch of beds, and decided on this hybrid memory foam/wrapped coil setup that we didn’t want to get off of once we laid down on it for a test drive. It felt like being lovingly cuddled by the patron deity of all things snuggly and fluffy and soft, except without subsequently swallowing us whole like quicksand and closing up over our trapped, suffocating bodies like a carnivorous foam blob monster, leaving behind only vaguely stick-figure-shaped fissures to mark where we once laid.

It was on sale as a set (mattress and foundation both), and because our cats had ripped a hole in our old box spring and started using it as the Catcave, I wanted a frame to get the foundation off the floor and away from kitty claws. So, we got this cute little upholstered frame thing that I thought was just a basic headboard-rails-and-footboard dealie.

Three hours and a Home Depot run later, I had it assembled. It looked weirdly overengineered to me compared to the frames we’ve had in the past, but I didn’t really dwell on that too much. We put the foundation and the mattress on top of the frame, and…the thing was 4 feet tall.

A quick Google search later, I’m facepalming and Mrs E is giggling like crazy. It wasn’t a frame, it was an Euro slat bed that’s replaces foundations/box springs, and I’d basically put a bed on top of a bed without realizing it. Now I have a superfluous queen-sized foundation leaning against one wall of my office. 😛

On the bright side, the first night of sleep on this thing was heavenly. I figure when we move, we’ll just put the foundation in a guest bedroom and put a new mattress on it.