That is, until one day last month when I serendipitously saw Tuft & Needle mentioned in a comment on a blog I follow. Promising quality mattresses for a fraction of the price of what you see in a mattress store, I decided to investigate.

American-made mattresses for reasonable prices

Tuft & Needle is a company founded by two software engineers from Silicon Valley. They are dedicated to making quality mattresses without gimmicks and price gouging. Their foam mattresses are made in the USA using American materials, eco-friendly, and 100% recyclable. They have a 30 night trial during which you can get a full refund for any reason and rather than returning the mattress to them, they hook you up with a charity to donate the mattress to. They also have a 7 year warranty to cover any defects or malfunctions.

That all sounded fantastic and then I saw the reviews and I was blown away. Everyone was raving about it and the few who didn’t love it were still impressed by Tuft & Needle’s customer service.

Tuft & Needle makes two different mattress models: 5″ thick ($200-$500) and 10″ thick ($300-$600). At just $500 for the 10″ thick queen size mattress, it seemed like a fairly safe gamble, especially with the 30 night trial. It even came with free shipping. Nick was skeptical about buying a mattress online, but having grown up with the internet, it didn’t seem that strange to me. I used a referral code I found online and got $50 off. Nice.

Referral codes: Gift $50, Get $50

Mattress arrived compressed and wrapped in plastic

Speaking of referral codes, I found out that using one not only gives you $50 off; Tuft & Needle also refunds $50 to the person whose referral code was used… up to the full price of the mattress. Holy cow. I posted my referral code a few places online and within a day or two, three people had already used it. The next day, I saw my credit card had been refunded $150 and my mattress hadn’t even shipped yet! O_O

Super fast delivery

Four days (two business days) after I placed the order, Tuft & Needle emailed me to let me know the mattress was on its way. It arrived via Fedex three days later (one week after I ordered it).

It came in a 67 pound box that measured 67″ x 15″ x 15″. The foam mattress inside was super compressed and rolled up in plastic. We took it upstairs, put it on our box spring, and began removing the plastic. When we cut through the inner plastic, the mattress started to suck in air and expand, which was pretty cool. The unboxing took no more than five minutes and probably a couple hours for the mattress to fully expand (though most of it happened within a matter of minutes).

Nick trying out the new mattress

A good night’s rest

Nick and I have been sleeping on the mattress for three weeks now and it has been great. My main concern with a foam mattress was that it would sleep hot, but the foam Tuft & Needle uses is breathable and heat hasn’t been a problem. The firmness suits us well (we’d give it 7 or 8/10 in firmness) and our quality of sleep has improved. Definitely worth the buy.

Thinking about getting one?

If you’re looking for a new mattress, Nick and I highly recommend that you check out Tuft & Needle. Make sure to use our referral link to get $50 off!

Updates

September 17, 2014 – Referral program ended: Tuft & Needle ended their referral program today, so the $50 off referral links will no longer work. You can read Tuft & Needle’s statement on ending the referral program on their website. It’s a bummer that they aren’t doing referrals anymore, but I get why they ended it. Nick and I are still very happy with our mattress and think it’s still a bargain even at full price.

August 6, 2015 – Extended trial: Tuft & Needle’s trial period has been extended to 100 nights. It’s been a year now that we’ve had our mattress. We still love it and haven’t had any issues.

(Cross-posted on my other blog, http://xaben.com)

Dining table & chairs

We were asked the other day if we had gotten a dining table yet. Whoops, guess we forgot to blog about that! The dining table we got is perfect for our new home. It is a gateleg table that seats up to 6 people. We usually only keep it opened halfway, which is perfect for just the two of us. When we want it out of the way, it folds down into a pretty compact console table. I love the purple dining chairs we got, too. They’re really comfortable and I don’t think the picture quite does their color justice.

Living room + bar stools

We also (finally!) got some bar stools. It was surprisingly difficult to find some that were bar height (rather than counter height). We visited lots of furniture stores and very few had any stools that were bar height. We narrowed it down to a black bar stool that had a back, but couldn’t swivel and a teal bar stool that didn’t have a back, but could swivel. We went with the teal ones, which look great with our rug.

Outdoor Bistro Set

So that we can enjoy our backyard a bit more, we got an outdoor bistro set over the weekend. We had been browsing for small outdoor dining sets for a while and fell in love with this set’s mosaic stone tile tabletop. We like that we can eat outside now and it’s nice to have somewhere to sit when we’re grilling.

We’ve been neglecting the garden lately since we’ve been so busy, but we had some time this weekend to tend to it. Nick and I are both totally new to gardening, so it’s been fun learning about taking care of everything. We want to plant some more herbs, but we’ll have to wait until next year for that.

Living Room

Our rug arrived yesterday! Hooray! We weren’t expecting it for a few weeks, so we were delighted when we got a phone call saying that it came in early. I fell in love with the rug when we first saw it 2 months ago and although we’ve done a lot of rug shopping, we never found one we liked better.

We went furniture shopping on the 4th of July, which is when we purchased our sofa. We visited a dozen furniture stores to get ideas and we ended up finding a super comfy couch that we really liked. We weren’t planning on buying a couch that day, but we couldn’t pass up the 4th of July deal on it.

Bedroom

After 6 years of not being able to sleep in because of the sun shining through the windows, we knew we wanted curtains for our new house right away. Neither of us were very knowledgeable about picking out curtains, but I think we did a decent job. We found some dark brown curtains that block a lot of light and a set of sheer curtains. The sheer curtains also came in a “curtain scarf,” so we got one of those, too, to make it look pretty. The curtains match our bedding set really well and give the room a nice finished look. And we love that the sun won’t be able to wake us up unwillingly anymore!

Clematis in our Backyard

It’s been almost 2 weeks since we moved in to our new house and it totally feels like home. We still have some boxes to unpack and decorations to put up, though, which is probably why we haven’t uploaded many pictures of our place yet. Expect some soon, though! In the meantime, enjoy the picture on the right of the clematis (thank you for telling me what it was, Mom!) that is blooming in our backyard.

I started my new job as a software developer at a start-up game development company on Monday. I’m really excited to be working there and I know I’m going to learn a lot. My first few days were mostly setting up my computer and whatnot, but I started diving into code on Thursday. The guys I work with are pretty cool. The worst part is the commute, but I can more or less set my own work hours, so I’m trying to find out which times are best for driving.

The weather in Seattle has been really nice this week. The forecast for the upcoming week looks very summery, too – sunny and highs in the low 80’s. That’s a little hotter than I like it, but I’m not going to complain while the rest of the country is dealing with 100°+ temperatures.

On July 1, Seattle enacted a plastic bag ban. Nick and I have been using reusable grocery bags for the past year, so it’s not a big deal for us, but we have to be extra careful not to forget them now. With our house, we also have a food and yard waste bin, which is new for us. Between food and yard waste and recycling, we find that we don’t produce that much actual garbage, which is kind of nice.

We met the couple we bought our house from earlier this week. They had some mail in the mailbox that didn’t get forwarded, so we said they could stop by to pick it up. They were really nice, friendly people and we enjoyed meeting them. They filled us in about our alarm system and told us that the shoe rack they left was custom-built for our house by her father, so they were happy we were using it.

Main Bathroom

One of the first decoration projects I tackled was the main bathroom. We only had one bathroom’s worth of bath mats, shower curtains, towels, etc., so I knew we would have to get something for the main bathroom fairly soon. I wrestled with various color palettes before I found a green and white shower curtain I liked and I picked the rest of the bathroom accessories based on it. The result is pictured on the left. Nick and I are really happy with it and smile every time we walk past the bathroom (it’s such a cheerful green!). Now we just need to find some art or something to put on the walls.

We also bought some curtains for our bedroom and a sofa for the living room that we’ll show off in another post.

The weather was really nice this evening, so Nick and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. We stopped at Joy Teriyaki to try out their teriyaki. We both liked it, but I think it could have used a little more teriyaki sauce. Yelp reviews for Joy Teriyaki recommend their Mongolian menu – especially the huushuur, a Mongolian pastry filled with beef, onion, and garlic. We’ll have to try it out next time!