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Tuft and Needle–Mattress Review Update @ 5 Years

Almost 5 years to the day I wrote the original Tuft and Needle mattress review here: Tuft and Needle–Mattress Review and it’s time for an update.

Perhaps that original review was prophetic. At the bottom of the review I called out their 10 year warranty and if I had any issues in 5 years I’d shoot them an email and they’ll replace it. That’s basically what just happened.

Let’s rewind a little bit first. I would say the first 2 years with our Original Tuft and Needle Mattress was perfect. About that time, I started to feel like my side was sagging a bit. But that’s not supposed to happen so I blamed it on the the original box springs we used from the old bed frame. I purchased two sheets of 3/4 inch plywood and put a platform between the box springs and the mattress. This helped for a while and to be honest I forgot about it, for the next two years.

At around the 4 year mark, I really started to realize that as I rolled to the center toward my wife, if felt like I was rolling up hill. That’s no good. Standing back I didn’t see any clear visible indentation but clearly I felt like I was sinking or my side was softer.

About 3 months ago we got rid of the big traditional wooden bed frame and opted for a newer platform bed. This took the box springs and the plywood completely out of the picture. It didn’t take long until I was hating life. Yes, something was wrong, I was clearly sinking and my side was softer than my wife’s.

So I reviewed the warranty:

Quoted here in case it changes later: ‘We offer a 10-year limited warranty that covers manufacturing and workmanship defects in the product. It includes things like sagging, or body impressions that are greater than 3/4 of an inch. It’s also going to cover any material breakdown of the foam that causes it to split, crack, or deteriorate in any other way. The cover is also included in the warranty. So if you notice any undone stitching or if the zipper breaks, we’re here to help you out.”

That was the rub, 3/4 of an inch, when I looked at the mattress, I didn’t see that. So I reached out. They replied almost immediately with suggestions for checking the bed. You could place two similar weighted objects on the bed, one in the impression, one in the area not depressed, lay a straight edge across the bed and it should be obvious. It just so happened that I had ordered a waterrower and had 4 gallons of water just sitting around waiting for it to arrive. So we took their suggestions and took the required pictures.

For reference the difference in the labels showing was right at 3/4 of an inch.

They immediately replied, “No Question”, we’ll send you another mattress and make arrangements to pick that one up.

I took the opportunity to ask about upgrading to their new MINT Mattress and awesomely they have a policy for that. Just pay the difference in price. Lucky for us it was Black Friday week and they were on sale so the difference was right in line with what I was willing to pay.

*Boom* 3 days later we have a new mattress. Here’s the best part, we get a 100 night free trial on the new mattress since we upgraded. If we decide we don’t like the MINT, they will pick it up, refund our money and send another Original. I’ll update this post in a few weeks when we make our final decision but as of right this moment I think we’ll be in love with it as we were the Original when we first got it.

So if this one lasts 5 years we’re golden 😉 and I’ll buy another. (The replacement doesn’t restart your warranty, which makes sense).

This was one of the smoothest customer service experiences I’ve had in the last 10 years. They stood behind the product and have earned a fan for life.

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Coffee, this aint no game.

Yes, we love our coffee we’ve loved our Krups coffee maker.  Actually we’ve had quite a few of them and I wrote about that here.

Since the last couple of repairs making one good Krups out of two, we’ve been looking for the next replacement.  We located what we wanted and just waited for the right deal.  We got that deal this weekend (Black Friday) on a refurbished unit from Seattle Coffee Gear with a 2 year warranty.

The Saeco Moltio Carafe HD8869/47 Superautomatic Espresso Machine

Removable Bean Hopper – Removable bean hoppers make it easy to clean and swap out beans. (Comes with two hoppers so we can now have decaf)
Double Thermoblock – Dedicated steam and brew thermoblocks offer unbeatable on-demand heat.
Removable Milk Carafe – A refrigerator-ready milk carafe makes it easy to store milk when not in use.
Ceramic Burrs – Heat-resistant ceramic helps preserve the delicate aromatics of espresso beans.
Pre-aroma – Programmable pre-infusion helps to reduce channeling and improves shot-to-shot consistency. < This sounds like marketing nonsense.
Programmable – Set and save your ideal drink temperature, coffee dosing and water to milk ratio.

All the things we wished about in the Krups, with a removable, washable brew unit and a few other upgrades.

It’s very early in, we ordered this as a co-Christmas gift.  It arrived today and of course we needed to set it up and make sure it worked.  It does. No point in putting it away until Christmas.

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Our return to the 8th wonder of the world.

Almost 8 years ago to the day was our first trip to West Baden. Can’t believe it’s taken us 8 years to get back.

I really don’t want to ruin it, but the days after Thanksgiving, well the place is empty. We did the Saturday/Sunday/Monday thing and had the place to ourselves again. There probably weren’t a dozen other guests at the hotel on Sunday. What a great way to spend a long weekend.

This trip we didn’t spend any time at the casino.  Instead we ran around antiquing and checking out the French Lick Winery.

I did skip the massage this time and let Claudine use all of the spa credit for herself.

West Baden 11/27/2017

 

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BMW Take 2

So after the 335i debacle, I still needed to upgrade my ride. The new role at Juniper has me spending way too much time in the car between Cincinnati, Louisville, Lexington, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland.  The RX8, as awesome as it is, just isn’t a highway road warrior car.  I need comfort and quiet so that I can continue to live on the phone an in conference calls while I drive around.

During the debacle I got to drive relatively new Honda loaner and I just wasn’t impressed.  I had also test driven a few other cars and just couldn’t shake the feeling I got in the BMW so we started looking around.

As much as I loved the performance associated with the twin-turbo 335i, we decided to take a different approach. We lucked into a pretty good deal on an older and larger 528i.

2008 BMW 528i

No Turbos, just a regularly aspirated straight 6.  *most* of the bells and whistles.  The bluetooth integration works well. The nav is old and crusty and non-updatable because it’s DVD driven, and  it doesn’t even have heated seats.  Who orders a car without heated seats these days?  It’s had most of the normal BMW leaks fixed recently and the stealership just put brakes all the way around and new shoes too.  So it’s likely I can drive this for 2-3 years and flip it without having to buy brakes and tires.

It’s a quality long distance commute vehicle. I’ll report back on any maintenance that’s required.  We’ll see how much the Bring More Wallet adage is true.  So far it gets a smooth 30MPG on the highway so that’s a significant boost.  I can get from Dayton to Louisville to Columbus on a single tank.   That I like.

More as it develops.

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Scuba Cayman – May 2017 Trip

Claudine and I had been planning to get our SCUBA certification for a while.  In the fall of 2016 we booked our classes with Scuba Unlimited.  Our plan was to do all the prerequisite work here but do the open water certification somewhere warm.  Grand Cayman to be exact.

So basically, for my 50th birthday that’s exactly what we did. We did the classwork and pool work in November and December of 2016 and the open water work over the week of May 13th through 20th, 2017.

We booked a condo for a week in Grand Cayman at Seven Mile Beach Resort with some friends (the same one’s who recommended Scuba Unlimited) who have a time share there and who has been spending a week on Grand Cayman since the early 90’s.

The flight down was anti-climactic.  Since we’re staying for a week and everything is expensive on Cayman we brought a suitcase full of food at the suggestion of the folks we’re going with.  (Sandwich fixings, meat, some steaks to grill, etc, etc.) So that we can cook our own breakfast and lunch, and have a cookout once or twice.  We also brought 4 bottles of wine (4x 750ml).  We also each brought a liter of liquor from the Duty Free.  Claudine a bottle of Vodka, and I opted for a bottle of Kraken rum.  For those doing the math, you can see that’s too much.  You’re allowed 1 liter of liquor per person, or 5 liters of wine, but not both which was a misunderstanding on our part at the time.

During the immigration/customs shakedown we disclosed that we had some FDA approved meat, which they wanted to see. Upon inspecting the meats they discovered the wine.  We had declared the 2 liters of Vodka and Rum but totally disregarded the wine.  Customs wasn’t happy with that and we were now treated like world class smugglers. In the end it cost us $12 duty.  Not the end of the world[tm].

We rented a car from Andy’s Car Rental who matched a budget price, it was $89 US for the whole week.  The car was a midsize, which in the US is a sub-compact.  I’d do that again, I’d think.

On the way to check in we stopped at the grocery and picked up all the other things we needed but didn’t bring.  Condiments and the like, we also discovered, outside of alcohol, food prices weren’t all that outrageous so we’ll not be bringing a suitcase full of food next time.

The condo was great, two bedrooms, nice living area, on the first floor, thanks to our Hosts.  About a half a block walk to the beach.

We arrived on a Saturday, with time to settle in and get a little beach time.  We would spend the next 6 days diving and enjoying the Cayman life.

Basic Dive Log details for each of the dives:

Sunday: Dives 1 and 2 of our 4 Certification Dives.
At the Aquarium (46 ft /41 mins) and Victoria’s Secret (48 ft / 44 mins) Dive sites.  At each of these sites we did skills for the first 20 mins in a sand spot and got to spend the rest of the time enjoying the dive.

Monday: Dives 3 and 4 of our 4 Certification Dives.
At Darvin’s Theory (60 ft / 38 mins) and Spanish Anchor (50 ft /  40 mins) Dive sites. At each of these sites we did skills for the first 20 mins in a sand spot and got to spend the rest of the time enjoying the dive.

(Yea! we’re now certified)

Tuesday: Dives 5, 6, and 7
At Sentinel Rock (80 ft / 28 mins) and Turtle Schooner (39 ft / 42 mins) Dive sites and afternoon at Stingray City (14ft /32 mins).
Sentinel Rock was a little deeper than expected, with our first swim through, completely awesome.  Turtle Schooner was a sweet shallow reef dive.  Our afternoon dive was a shallow dive at Stingray City west where our give master spent time feeding the rays.

Wednesday: Dives 8 and 9
Two short dives at Turtle Reef (60 ft /  45 mins) and (58 ft / 39 mins).
Our first real experience with significant current.  Dive one was a bit tough, dive 2 was better despite the shorter down time.  Spent some time working on buoyancy.

Thursday: Dives 10 and 11
At Slaughterhouse (104 ft / 35 mins) and Anglefish Reef (52 ft / 52 mins) Dive sites.  Slaughterhouse was awesome, deep wall dive with swim through, Anglefish Reef was also amazing, we’re hitting our dive stride now.

Friday: Dives 12 and 13
At Round Rock (100 ft / 35 mins) and Kittewake (61ft / 44 mins) Dive sites. Claudine and I coming through the 100 foot swim through.  I’m behind and below.

We had an amazing week, 2 dives a day on average, looking forward to buying our own regulators and BCD’s.  We ate at some amazing restaurants while we were there.  We also had excellent Snorkeling at the beach at the resort.

Other photos from our trip.