ince Bobby and I will only be in Miami for about 6 months (I’m telling you, this golf pro lifestyle is a wild ride), we didn’t want to invest in an expensive bed frame – or even an expensive mattress, for that matter. We have a legit mattress but it’s residing in a cozy storage unit in New Orleans right now until we have a more permanent home.
Should we rent a mattress? Rent a bed frame? Find a cheap mattress on Amazon and make it comfy with a mattress pad? So many options…and then we stumbled upon the perfect, throw-back-to-our-college-days type of solution:
Let’s sleep on the blow up mattress! Genuis. (Don’t worry, it becomes more grown-up in a bit.)
Why yes, little disgruntled iguana, that’s exactly what we decided. See, for our 1st anniversary, Bobby went all out and bought a complete camping set. He was going to get us a romantic room at a quaint bed and breakfast, but after researching the rates he knew I’d like it WAY more if he invested in something that we’d have for a long time – in this case, our own bed and breakfast set-up whenever we want it.
In the past year and a half, we’ve gone camping…3 times? It was high time to start getting our money’s worth out of this fancy air mattress. We purchased an additional mattress pad AND a quilted cover to go on top so it wouldn’t feel like we should be in a tent. For a grand total of $180 (FAR less than a new mattress), we’re basically sleeping on a cloud.
But this wasn’t quite the look we were going for…
We needed to elevate the bed. That’s when Bobby suggested the use of pallets. YES, that would be perfect! Fits our general, vintage-y style and would certainly fit our budget.
Like any seasoned Extreme Crafter, I went straight to Pinterest. So many great ideas, but a little too intense for our liking – I wanted to put in minimal effort for this project.
Like, maybe stacking the pallets would be fine…I think we could handle that…but sanding them down with an electric sander and painting them and screwing them together and and and…I was exhausted just thinking about it. (PLUS, we have nowhere to sand and paint – how do people craft in condos?!?)
It was time to go get some pallets.
Let me just recommend something. If you’re yearning for some stress in your life…I have a really great idea for you:
- Rent an apartment in a condo – make sure they have very specific rules around when you can move stuff in and use the moving elevator. Preferable if you have to be done by 5pm and can’t do it on weekends.
- Have no access to friends with trucks. That would make this far too easy.
- Don’t start the whole pallet project until 2:30pm. You want to be under the gun for the 5pm deadline in your condo.
- Mix in some crazy Miami traffic and you should be good to go! Being time crunched is really key to this whole thing.
We basically followed all of these steps, so we were GOLDEN.
We scrambled to rent a UHaul pickup truck. Then we drove about 25 minutes out of Miami to the pallet place (they deliver but only for orders of 100 pallets or more. Boo.). We picked out our pallets – $6 a piece babyyyyyy – and they fork-lifted them into the truck for us. Then Bobby and I strapped them in to make sure they didn’t fly out all over the highway. Next, we (safely) raced back to our condo.
It all felt very intense.
Isn’t that SO MANY pallets? The man in charge of the loading/unloading area downstairs is super nice…he had been told we were going to be unloading some “small pieces of furniture,” and he didn’t even seem phased when we pulled up with old, recycled pallets in our truck. Class act. I’m going to make him some muffins this week for putting up with our shenanigans.
I borrowed the valet cart to help transport our “small pieces of furniture” up to our apartment. The cart was maxed out at 4 pallets, so this meant 4 trips up and down before we got all of them inside the apartment. A total of 8 elevator rides with loading and unloading in under 30 minutes. Yikes.
We did it, though! Let me just say that 16 pallets stacked inside an apartment is pretty intrusive…
We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, it was such a whirlwind day. So while I cooked dinner, Bobby hauled 12 of the pallets up to our bedroom area (the other 4 are going to be transformed into a daybed/couch downstairs). He’s such a champ.
Finally, it was time for the SIMPLE part. We took a 5 dollar tarp and tucked it around the bottom of the air mattress to save it from popping against any splinters.
We stacked the pallets in 4 quadrants of 3 pallets each. Nestled them against each other. Centered the mattress on top of them. And…voila!
100 times better, wouldn’t you agree? And here’s the thing – if you take away all the craziness with getting the pallets physically into our place, the actual work of making them into the “bed frame” was basically ZERO. I actually like the look of the exposed pallets and wouldn’t want them cut down to size or sanded/painted.
Here’s my declaration: this is The World’s Easiest Pallet Project!
Graham even approves. He just likes to lay in his doggy bed and stare at it in amazement. Next up for the bedroom? Stacking our vintage crates as night stands on each side! And then maybe something to decorate the walls? Any ideas? Let me know!
How impressive a feat! I can’t imagine the stress, but the outcome looks great! I love that you guys are kind of eternally camping,
As for the pallets, do they make any noise when you turn in bed at night? That’s the only downside I could see if they weren’t screwed together or more firmly fitted as a frame.
Absolutely love the comforter and pillows (and of course your accompanying doodles).
Condo life sounds restrictive, but glad you have been able to successfully brave the rules so far and stay positive.
As for decorating the walls, I guess it depends a little on what methods the condo lets you use to affix things to them! And also, what you’ve already got hanging around. :) But probably, some maps or watercolors, your folk art animals, corkboard filled with envelopes and mail…
Cool Condo-living Cheers!
Celeste, I was wondering the same thing as we put the pallets together – are these going to separate at all? I was particularly worried about them sliding around when we got on or off the mattress. Luckily, there hasn’t been any problems! Not even a single little noise that I’ve been aware of. It’s actually kind of making me wonder why people go to the trouble of screwing pallets together at all when it’s for a project like this…it would certainly make it more permanent, but having them separate like this makes the whole process so much easier – both for putting it together but also if you ever wanted to move it to a different room etc. (or completely deconstruct it as we will have to do!).
LOVE your ideas for how to decorate the walls – so hard to choose just one, I kind of want to do a smattering of everything that you suggested. :) It just all sounds so good. Thank you for lending your artist’s eye!
This reminds me of my senior year of college! I slept that entire year on two blow up mattresses that Sylva lent me. I guess I got used to it… but make sure to keep that mattress inflated or else you wake up with a sore back!
Anyway, Woohoo! This looks very Pinterest-worthy! I can’t wait to see the bed side tables.
I also LOOOVE your little comics! They are so cute! The squirrel just cracks me up. :)
Haha the squirrel CRACKS you up? I see what you did there!
Yep, Bobby’s taken it upon himself to inflate the mattress every night – so far, so good with keeping our backs in tip-top shape! I honestly can’t really tell the difference between this mattress and most other comfy mattresses I’ve slept on – I think the quilted pillow topper really helps!
Question – does your mattress move around? I made a palette bed but the mattress doesn’t stay put and I’m not sure what to do :(
Huh, shoot that sounds frustrating! :( We never had an issue with the mattress moving around…did you put a tarp down first? I think that may have made things a bit more grippy for ours. Perhaps if yours is still moving around you could try to screw in some small “rails” – similar to what we did for our pallet daybed/couch. I know that takes it into the realm of more intensive DIY, though. Good luck to you Cara, let me know if you figure out a good solution!