Sitting Pretty

With our penchant for frugality, when we finished the Franken-mattress, we thought perhaps we'd use the old mattress foam to replace the foam in the current settee cushions as they were suffering from the same proverbial sag and fatigue. Read that: they were as flat as pancakes and hard on the butt. We thought there would be at least a little foam life left in the bed mattress foam. And being the packrat that I am, I figured I'd not only have the foam to work with, I'd also have a nice long zipper and a big chunk of heavy cloth.

Ah, the rude awakening. The zipper on the mattress cover was so frozen shut, we finally had to break it to get at the foam. When it finally burst open, the foam spewed forth in a shower of black dust and disintegrated all over the saloon floor. The fabric was not fit for any purpose I could imagine. Quite the mess and probably a strong signal that despite our frugal tendencies, this foam mattress was doomed to the trash bin. That did not address the problem with the flat settee cushions, however.

Foamland up the hill on Murray Street in Hobart is an interesting shop. Its ad reads “More than just foam!” and so there was. There was wadding, faux-leather toy horses, non-skid material, rope and brightly colored thread. But mostly … there was lots of foam...mattresses, cushions, pretty much all sorts of foam stuff . The people are pleasant and helpful. They let me take pictures though they thought it was weird.

We did a recon trip first to get a quote and an idea of how much work this would be ... cutting foam to size and gluing pieces together to get a snug fit. We found it was cheaper to bring the zippered cushion covers to them and have them cut the foam to size and stuff it in, than to do it ourselves. Hallelujah! They promised they could do it in a day and though it was not the norm, they'd happily deliver the cushions back to the boat for us. We were relieved that we wouldn't be walking a couple of miles with four big foam settee cushions under our arms...not heavy, but certainly unwieldy and very bulky.

I might add that this was yet another chore that was NOT on the “to-do list”; nor were the screens, of course; nor the mattress, come to think of it. This is why we keep busy on the boat and never get bored. There are endless tasks to amuse us and assuage our never-ending search for creature comforts.

Well, the cushions came back at the end of the day and all was good. We're sitting pretty now ...a couple inches higher than before. It's easier to shovel food into our mouths, now that we're closer to the table.