The Making of a Bed...

We needed a bed frame, it was about time we had some real bedroom furniture.  I loved the Pottery Barn style furniture, but couldn't afford it, so I looked around to find something similar that I might be able to build myself.  I am not carpenter but I have done a few projects that turned out reasonably well.  A couple years ago, I found this great website that was full of Pottery Barn knock off ideas and had FREE plans! I knew I had found my kind of place.  The website is Ana-White.com and she has fabulous plans, tons of pics from people who have made them and great tutorials.

Here is the start of the head board an foot board for a queen size bed frame.  This was pretty easy to build.  I cut the arch in the top boards with a jig saw and sanded (and sanded a LOT more).  Then I lined up 1x8 inch boards until I was close to the width I needed then trimmed the last 2 boards on each side to get the right width.  Next I laid a top piece and a bottom piece on top and below the 1x8 inch boards and glued and nailed them in place.  I let it dry overnight, and went on to the next stage.

This image shows the gentle arch (after some serious sanding).

Eventually, I had to come up with a way to attach the leg posts to the head and food boards, along with the side boards.  It was a challenge but I managed to carve out the area for the boards to fit into.

I added some very simple trim boards to help make it look a little more like furniture, added some top boards to both the head and foot board sections, and got busy painting.

I let Sunshine paint the primer coat, she did a great job!

Once it was all together I added a coat of white paint (or 3), and sanded the edges some for a distressed look.  In this image you can see the basic trim boards I used.

Then it was time for the set-up process.  Bob made sure it was all square and secured tightly.

Spud man tests it out.  FYI this sucker is HEAVY!  You don't want to have to move it...trust me.

 Ahhh....all done.....satin sheets and all.  That was the night we discovered we don't actually like satin sheets.

Obviously this was finished near Christmas time, as we have our Christmas comforter on there to be festive.

Official testing committee.  We've had the bed in use for a couple years and so far so good.  The only thing I'd do differently is to add a better primer coat to seal the wood before adding white coats.  The yellow from the pitch in the pine wood did bleed through just a little on a few boards but it isn't too noticeable.  Other than that it is wearing like iron and still sturdy.

Let the silliness begin!

Shortly after this we read them a book called No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed!