The process of buying a bed in the US is intensely weird. I’ve been trying to buy a bed for Klara for months and I’m failing. I find a bed at a store and tell the store assistant that I want to buy it for my kid to sleep. But it turns out that unless you can name all the parts of the bed (and unlike everywhere else in the world, a bed has five million parts with confusing, weird names), you won’t get an actual bed delivered. You’ll get unusable parts. And then an endless dialogue begins of “oh, so you also needed railings / foot board / box spring / bolts to connect one to the other! You should have said that from the start!”
Seriously, how am I supposed to know about the bolts? I just want a usable bed! When I go to a restaurant, nobody expects me to recite the whole list of ingredients for each dish. “Oh, you wanted salt on yours? You never said that!” When I buy a dress at a store, it’s assumed that the buttons and the pockets are already on there if they were on the display model.
I’ve just had my fourth frustrated bed delivery and I don’t know what else I can do to transmit the simple idea that I need a bed a person can sleep on.
This is happening with different stores and different beds, so I’m assuming this is a normal practice.
It’s probably a cultural thing because N is just as puzzled as I am.
Clarissa's Blog 
I have never had such difficulty buying a bed. This is weird indeed!
LikeLike
Usually when you buy a fancy mattress, you also get box spring, and with them you will get a very simple metal frame that offers no support and only works with the box spring (it’s literally, like, four rods).
A fancy (presumably wooden) frame with a headboard and all is bought separately, and may be complicated to assemble. Foot boards are not super common, and I recommend against them for people who are taller than 5’9″ anyway. Based on what you’re saying above, I am assuming most of your problems are associated with the wooden frame you want.
The simplest bed purchase if you don’t want a fancy frame or a fancy mattress is the following:
1) Get a mattress-in-a-box, like so (Zinus is good). No box spring.
https://www.walmart.com/browse/home/mattress-in-a-box/4044_103150_539386_1985909
2) Get a good quality wire metal frame that does the job of box spring and supports the mattress. Zinus is again pretty good. We just got this one for middle son a few weeks ago.
I promise this is all. Won’t look fancy, but it is guaranteed to be a bed. Good luck!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very weird. Maybe borrow a friend’s pick-up truck and negotiate at the bed store to take away the exact floor model bed that you want. You aren’t the first person to have to send back something ordered in a store and delivered later…. but 4 times???!!!
LikeLike
Four times, two different stores. I’m going nuts at this point.
LikeLike
Get a simple bed from Ikea or any other store that you like and ask them to deliver with installation (called white glove delivery). they will do everything for you for additional 150 bucks.
LikeLike
I concur with the other commentators that your experience sounds very bizarre.
I have bought two (adult, queen-sized) beds in my lifetime, and on both occasions I simply went to a furniture store, found a specific bed that I liked, and instructed the store to have that model delivered to my residence and to have the delivery personnel fully assemble the bed in my bedroom — the exact process that “PS” describes in his/her comment.
The purchase couldn’t have been any easier.
LikeLike
Sorry to have misidentified you, “rs”! With the fonts showing on my screen, “rs” resembles a capital “PS” when I don’t have my reading glasses on.
LikeLike
KD Frames is our go-to for this. We bought our own folding bed frame from them years ago, and it turned out to be incredibly easy to move from one house to another, so this move, we left the kids’ old trundle set behind, and got them their own KD folding frames (since we’ll likely be moving again in a year). They’re made of poplar, don’t require a box spring, some assembly required but nothing difficult, durable, and we have no complaints. Throw a Zinus mattress on top and you’re good to go. And when we have to move, the model we got just folds in half and fits in the UHaul no problem. They have other models though. Bonus points: not made in China.
https://kdframes.com/
LikeLike
For the record, KD sends their frames in a box, with instructions on how to put it together. If you’re not the sort of person who can handle basic assembly… maybe buy something else.
LikeLike
Furniture made our of poplar is fine if you don’t move all that much. If you’re in the military and almost constantly changing locations, wooden furniture that isn’t made of oak quickly turns into kindling.
LikeLike
Fair enough. We’ve moved our Queen-sized frame twice now, and it’s held up beautifully. Possibly not so well for ten moves, but for the price… we could use it for kindling after four, replace it, and still come out ahead.
LikeLike