DIY Bed Construction for the tall person in your life
I have not had a real bed since I moved to Seattle over a year ago, when I decided to donate my bulky and outdated furniture. My roommate and I just moved into a new, larger place, and I decided to get something a little more normal to sleep on. I decided that I didn't want to go the Ikea route, because their furniture just seems so cheap (low quality) while not cheap (inexpensive) enough to be worth it.
So I started to look at some nice "grown up" furniture. I realized that some day, I'm going to be sharing my bedroom furniture with someone else. And I also reasoned that someone else is not likely to share my taste in furniture. Grown up furniture instantly became unattractive. I decided to consider building my own bed.
The cool thing is that it's become quite common (think Ikea again) to not use a box spring and put the mattress directly on a platform bed, which is taller than a standard bed and has something in the middle to hold up the mattress. Coincidentally, these are easier to build DIY than the traditional beds anyway.
After several weeks of on-again-off-again research and a couple of trips to Lowe's, I decided to come up with my own design completely. I consulted several blogs, but didn't quite see something that worked for me. The really cool thing is that I could build this thing however I wanted. So I decided to make it tall. I am 6'3". Normal size stuff sucks. I hate bathroom and kitchen counters, which seem to be designed for midgets... But, I digress. Here's what happened:
This was pretty much my first time going out on my own and buying lumber. I've worked with my dad on building projects before. So designing and coming up with the tools wasn't bad, for the most part. I went to Lowe's with notebook and pen in hand, headed directly to the lumber section, and started dreaming this thing up. The drawing looks similar to, but not like an exact vision of, what I ended up with. I made a lot of changes along the way.
These big hardware stores have the ability to cut your lumber down to size for you, which is really helpful for us city slicker types out there. A saw is the only thing I would have needed for this project that I didn't already own. So, I went ahead and had the guy with the dragon tattoo (seriously; it was even green) make my cuts for me. I was at Lowe's for 3 hours, but what I think was the hardest part was already done for me.
I had a 10% off coupon for Lowe's and 5% cash back for shopping at Lowe's with my credit card this quarter. This saved about $25, and brought my net total to about $145 with tax. About $45 of that was in lumber. I purchased a whole lot of 3/8" x 4" bolts, washers, and nuts with the intention of making this thing easy to take apart. I ended up using about a fourth of them, as I refined my design during the building process.
Just for kicks, here's what my car looked like after I loaded all this junk in. Note the lack of plywood. You don't need to put a plywood board under the mattress. The design I envisioned uses slats, spaced to cover about 1/3 of the area under the mattress, to hold it up. This will make it a lot easier to move in the future than if I had used plywood. It probably cost about the same if not a little bit more.
The first step was to make the side rails. There are two of these and they consist of a 2 x 3 screwed into a 2 x 6. This design does not use anything fancy like pockets or angled corners. The side rails are the exact length that I wanted to have available for the mattress. the 2 x 3 is on the 2 x 6 the distance from the bottom equal to the short dimension of the 2 x 3 (which is 1.5"). This was initially part of the design, as there was going to be another rail across the head and foot end, but I decided to nix it at the last minute. Now it's arbitrary.
To put the legs in order, I drilled two 3/8" holes through the first leg and rail. Do this for each leg location and mark them, in case you didn't match your legs completely. I didn't get a good picture of the legs going onto the end rails, but the key there is to measure the location for the leg. There is no 2 x 3 on this rail to but the leg up against. The legs are 2 x 6 boards cut to whatever length you desire. I desired a tall bed, so I made my legs 23". Which ended up being a lot taller than I imagined, but it works well!
This is a view of each of the legs for this bed. I decided on six total. There are two for each side rail and two for the middle rail. This way, all of the load transferred from the mattress through the slats and into the rails goes directly into the legs. If you didn't put the center legs on, the end boards (head and foot) would have to support the weight, not to mention a levered bracket to attach the center rail to the end boards.
This is a view of one of the legs attached to a side rail. The 3/8" bolt goes all the way through both 2 x 6 boards (the leg and the edge rail). I used a washer on both sides of the bolt, as shown:
The washers spread the force applied when you put the nut on the bold over a wider surface area. This reduces problems with sinking the bolt head or the nut into the wood.
This is a shot of me arranging the four parts that I had assembled: the two side rails and two end rails. This part was super difficult, since I didn't have another person around to hold anything for me. This problem was compounded by the fact that I was using angle brackets. These are quite the pain in the ass!
This shot shows the four major pieces assembled. One thing I learned: When choosing wood for a project, check the lumber for knots and overall quality. A couple of the 2 x 6 boards I picked up split before the boy with the dragon tattoo could cut them for me. So I went back and grabbed higher quality boards. Those first boards that were lower quality did end up making up the large outer part of the rails, and drilling into them was incredibly difficult. All of the other wood was relatively easy to work with.
I also made a mistake with my choice of screws, which were longer than the 1.5" thick boards they go into on one side. I decided to use my hammer to bend them over into the wood. I only did this on one side of each bracket (on the end rails). The bracket will stay with the end rails when I take this thing apart some day.
This is a view of the end rail. I have already added the center rail. Again, I didn't get this at a good angle, but the center rail sits directly on the center leg of the end rail. I threw a couple of screws into it to keep it in place. At this point, I checked the whole structure for the wobble factor, and I wasn't quite satisfied. I decided to use these scrap ends from my slat stock to make triangular support at the ends. These were the exact right size without any adjustment, and it worked wonders! Wobble gone!
The next step was to put in the slats. Note the four shorter slats that I staggered. I did this to save myself some slat stock (the slats are 1 x 4's). I threw a screw into both ends of these shorter slats. For the longer slats, I only put a screw into the middle, just to keep them where I want them. Easy peasy. I did, however, totally forget to put in the center leg that I made. I have yet to determine if it's necessary. I am leaning toward no.
And like that, the bed is done! I took a seat on the edge, and my feet barely touch the floor. I didn't really mean to make it quite this tall, but it's actually pretty nice!
Until the next proj
Andy
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