[Ran D. St. Clair]

After sleeping for a while on my “Standard Soft Foam” mattress from Foam N More I decided that it still wasn’t soft enough, at least not in the shoulder area. My son, who is a stomach or side sleeper, also complained that it was too firm when he tried it. I was out of options as far as buying a softer mattress so I decided to open it up and try modifying it. Since the mattress only cost about $137 to begin with I wasn’t risking much.

Somewhat to my surprise, it was easy and worked really well. The Foam N More mattresses come with a simple zippered cover, so it was easy to pull the cover back and expose the foam. I then lay down on the foam and sketched out the area I wanted to soften. It turns out to be a roughly T-shirt shaped area corresponding to my shoulders and rib cage.

The idea was to drill some holes through the mattress to remove foam and make it softer. I just happened to have a “Webster” with a thin walled tubular steel handle about 7/8” in diameter. I pulled the plastic end cap off and sharpened the tubing with my grinding wheel and used a file to remove the bur from the inside edge. I was then able to drill through the foam by pressing the tube into the foam and twisting. As a practical matter it would drill cleanly for the first inch or two and then tear out a roughly cone shaped chunk of foam for the rest. This suited me just fine as removing bigger chunks of foam meant having to drill fewer holes.

I drilled the holes every 6 inches or so and then lay down on the mattress to check the feel. I then added holes between the holes and rechecked the feel until I got what I wanted. I never got the sensation that I was laying down on a lumpy of “holey” mattress. Even though the mattress appears to be flat, there is a definite feeling of being cradled in a wide groove (which I actually like). Obviously you could drill holes throughout the entire mattress if you wanted it to be evenly softer.

If at some point I had gone too far, it would not have been difficult to stuff some of the foam plugs back into the holes, but I never felt the need to do that.

After about 20 minutes of drilling I was done. I zipped the cover back up and made the bed in the normal manner with a 1” soft egg crate foam topper, just because I already had it.

So far the testing is very nice. I got just what I wanted in the shoulder area and I also like the firmer feel in the hip area. For some reason a firmer surface in that area is better for my sciatica. (I must be getting old.)

I don’t expect that there will be any long term negative impact on the durability of the mattress, but it will take years to know for sure. In the mean time I finally have what I wanted and it didn’t even cost me any more money to get it.

Previously I could not have recommended any of the foam mattresses I bought on line. There was no way to know what any one person might want in terms of firmness, or what the mattress might provide. The ability to tailor the mattress after you receive it is a game changer. I suspect it is one of the reasons that the select comfort air mattresses are so popular. (I have one in my stix n bricks and mostly like it.)

The Select Comfort is really nice in that you can adjust the firmness even while you are laying on it, but it doesn’t allow you to independently adjust the shape. For example, when a Select comfort is set really soft it tends to sag down somewhat like a hammock. When set hard it tends to bulge upward in the middle. Regardless of the shape of the air mattress portion there is a separate shape and firmness for the foam boarder around the air mattress.

I am also beginning to realize that a flat shape isn’t necessarily desirable anyway. It is nice to sink into a stable groove where you can fully relax and not use even a tiny amount of tension to hold yourself in position. Traditionally beds are supposed to look flat to slightly mounded and a bed with a visible groove would look beat up or worn out. It’s only an aesthetic issue but aesthetics are important.

Beds and bedding are such a personal thing. You can’t really tell what you like by lying down on it for just 5 minutes. Even a night or two isn’t enough. I also think that there is a tendency to assume you know what you like based of what you have had in the past. You can’t know that you would like something different until you have lived with it for a while, and you will never get the chance to find out if you reject it out of hand because it is different.

I realize that most of you will never start carving on your mattress, it’s just too strange. On the other hand I can tell you that it is not that difficult or expensive. It’s really nice to get exactly what you want and sleep is such an important part of your life.

No, I have nothing to do with any mattress or bedding company. I just like being comfortable and sleeping. It’s all just interesting engineering to me, but with a rather immediate and personal payback.