The Bed

Ahhhhh…..the bed project – it’s a long story so get comfy!  It all started when I went shopping for a real bed (headboard/footboard/etc).  A girl can only live so long with just a mattress and box spring on a metal bed frame.  Hummmm – did you know real beds are really expensive?  Especially king size!  Add in some delivery fees and holy cow, we are talking some serious cash so that I can sleep with a headboard.  But it was really nice of those CRAZY people at the furniture store to offer me financing.  Hummmm – monthly payments on a bed……ummm - NO!!  We don’t even have car payments so I’m certainly not going to make payments on some over-priced wood furniture.  (If you know me, you know my philosophy on money matters – thank you Dave Ramsey.)  Also, the question came to mind about how this “delivered” bed would fit up the stairs since our mattress barely made it after much bending and shoving.

So I kept searching for a solution for my bed dilemma.  Maybe I would do one of those DIY padded leaning headboard things I always see them make on HGTV.  But that would require a large piece of plywood (that would not fit in my car) and buying foam padding and picking out fabric and then hoping it wouldn’t look “home-made”.  I was almost ready to admit defeat and just continue living headboard-less until I stumbled across Ana White.  Perfect!  I had a solution – build my own bed.  If all those people on her website could do it, certainly I could build one, too….right???

Somehow after completing the kitchen “furniture” I believed that I had enough experience to tackle building a king size farmhouse bed.  Yep – that’s right – farmhouse! – not just some flimsy little headboard.  The bed I wanted was farmhouse style – so we’re talking 4x4 posts, 2x4’s, 2x6’s, 1x8 planks – nothing wimpy about it.  So I printed off the plans, measured my room, made some modifications, measured again, made several scouting trips to Home Depot to check out wood options, measured again, made more modifications, more trips to my friends at the orange box, more measuring, and finally decided on my plan.  After a week of all this, I was brave enough to commit to buying  some wood and having orange cut my pieces that were too big for trusty miter “bob”.   Well, only half committed – I only bought the wood I needed for the main headboard plank.  So at this point, I had only invested $30ish into the project.  That way if my plans totally tanked, I rationalized it was the same cost as eating out one night.

So on to building…..well, actually more like endless hours of sanding.  I learned that sanding each piece of wood first will make a much more professional-looking end product.  And I really wanted the bed to turn out fabulous so I knew I had to be patient and sand everything first.  But after everything was sanded, I was still just left with a pile of wood – although it was a very smooth and pretty pile!

Now – let the building begin!  I took my time (that patience thing again) and laid out all the boards to get them straight, measured, restraightened, used wood glue, restraightened, nailed by hand, restraightened, and finally I had the main part of the headboard done.  It was straight, smooth, and looked pretty impressive.  So I made a few more trips to my friends at orange for the remaining pieces of the headboard.  I’m pretty impressed by the amount of service you get when someone sees a chick picking out 4x4 posts (8 ft length).  Now if only I could get that kind of attention when I need something at the grocery store!

More wood = more hours of sanding.   Once I cut the remaining pieces, I realized I had to make some decisions on the finish.  Do I leave it natural, stain it, paint it, distress it?  Who knew there were so many decisions to make?  So I spent a few more days of torturous pondering.  I finally committed to painting it a light cream color.  Actually, we had a ½ gallon left over from repainting our living room and it seemed to be a good match – “free” paint – perfect!  I spent the next several days priming and painting.

I had to enlist the hubby’s help to carry the headboard pieces upstairs and assemble them once in the bedroom.  A few hours later, we had a fully assembled headboard attached to our bed frame.  It looked really good – I was so proud.  BUT….I knew it could be SOOOOOO much better if I built the footboard and attached the whole thing together with wood side pieces.  So we had to un-attach parts of the headboard and move our mattress into the office so I had room to work.

And I started the whole process over again to sand, build, prime, paint, distress, and attach a footboard.  Of course, Beau managed to get paint on his tail and feet during all this - good thing he's a white cat and it was white-ish paint!

What started as a shopping trip, turned into a project that I thought I could whip up in a week, but actually took over a month to complete.  However, after putting the whole room back together, it was totally worth all the work, and we are happily enjoying the bed that I built!!!