Fixed bed mattress passed its best

Our 2006 Wyoming mattress had not been that comfortable of late.
(starting to feel the springs) But nine years service of 10 to 14 week away each year plus the time we used it as an extra bedroom for six months under its belt time to replace?

How much !!!! £300 to £700  + a high price delivery charge, pick me off the floor.

My better half suggested a memory foam topper, starting price around £120. That was until we remember the one we tried out, in a bed at home. We found it too warm for our comfort now resigned to spare bedroom.
We could give it a try in the caravan? However our next planed trip away will be for 8 weeks in Dordogne too long a trial period me do think.

So a search on the internet how mattress are made and repaired was an eye opener and I felt confident enough to have ago. I carefully unpick the upper seam around the top edge of the mattress
about two foot ( Care needed to start with, the unpick sewing tool was a god saver)

I could then inspect the inners. (What a metal spring cage boxed in with ½ inched of foam covering and a slight quilting to the outer cover to the mattress)

We unpicked the rest of the mattress seam top and bottom ends and one side
(with hindsight now would have left the angle cut off side seam, and unpicked the opposite back side)

We lifted the spring box section out for inspection. Wear had occurred to the top foam reducing it size in thickness the spring appeared ok and well lock in the cage.

The feel of the spring while sleeping was the reduction of the thickness of the foam and poor padding from the quilting my opinion

We decided to replace the top foam, and quick took the measurement and got a quote over the phone of around £50. We took ourselves off to this outlet. They were most helpful cutting the foam ½ inch thick to
our measurement. They advise us to stick this to the top of the old foam (to give extra padding) and we also bought a layer of cushion packing wadding to cover the top new foam to add a bit more to the quilting. So foam, wadding, can of spray glue, a reel
of button thread, and a very useful curved needle was approx £75.

We stuck the foam to the top of the old foam, and then trimmed the edge of the new foam to fit with a slight angle to reduce bulking. The wadding (quite thin) was lay on top of the new foam and glued  to reduce
movement then trimmed around the edge to reduce bulking.

We place the mattress cover on a large table and place the foam boxed spring cage section in place carefully pull up the side section to fit around the box. We then pulled the top mattress cover over the top.
At this stage you can see if more reduction is needed to reduce bulking.

We stretching the top cover over and attached holding stitching about a foot apart along our seam line. (May well be a different line to the old one because of extra thickness) Once happy with the fit. Start
over lapping stitching to form a thick seam between the side covering of the mattress and the top cover. You will need to tension the top cover as you stitch.

We found pinch the two between your forefinger and thumb and sew the over lapping stitching to foam a good size thick seam. Once completed then the blinding tape can be added to cover this seam, the curved
needle is a must for this job. You need the curved needle to going into the tape, around the back of the seam and out through to bottom edge of the tape, then reverse this will foam a nice cover to the seam and add strength to this section of the mattress.
This was the longest time consuming task the sewing (5 hours) but worth it to us.

We believe that some upholstering outlets may offer this service with a seam machining service?

So for us a wet Saturday with nothing better to do save us a packet in term of money our saving amount to more than our ferry crossing

I quick test and it as good as new.

I hope this is of some help to other, have a go,

Regards

Bob