Building a Bed

I thought I'd start off my first project entry on a good note with a project I have completed, a bed. (Note: the first major piece of furniture I've built.) I had owned an IKEA bed previously, but sold it when I moved 2 years ago. Since then I've been sleeping on a mattress and boxspring that sits on the floor. Now that I've moved to a more permanent residence, I've decided it's time to have a real bed again, and one that's not made out of particle board.

Inspired by a Pottery Barn design, but turned off by the price tag ($$$$), I decided to build my own bed. I used the dimensions listed on Pottery Barn's website to create design plans for the bed and purchased all the wood from Lowe's for about $200.

The construction consisted of 3 identical boxes with storage space, trim around the borders, and a support system to connect the 3 boxes. Working here and there on the project for a bit, I built the three base wood frames with my boyfriend's help in 2 weeks. The first week was spent cutting all the materials, then the next week was used for assembling of the boxes. As expected, I dropped the project for about a month until I picked it up again to do the trim and paint which took only 3 work evenings since I did not buy enough trim the first time.

Now the next hiatus in the project was not my fault. This was the time when mother nature released her wrath on New England for supporting the Patriots and the basement was flooded with an inch of water for 2 weeks. Luckily there was a wooden pallet in the basement where we could stack the boxes until the basement was dry again.

I then dragged my feet on the project because I had no idea how to connect the 3 boxes so that it supported boards for the mattress, but could also be disassembled without unscrewing the wood. When I finally sat down, figured it out, and did it, it was already 3 months since I first bought the materials for the project.

The final product is shown in the picture above. The wooden plank and 2x4's on top of the bed are used to fill the whole in the middle and connect the 3 sections together. The dimensions fit a queen size mattress.