our professional bed

We built a bed, folks. Specifically, we built this bed. Specificallyer, Jason built the bed and I stood around and constantly asked him if he needed help. He didn’t, and I’m not sure the result would be so great if I had so much as picked up a paintbrush.

It started because Garrett and Emily were coming and needed a place to sleep while they visited. Instead of getting a whole new bed and frame for a guests, we got a new bed for ourselves and we put our old bed in the guest room. We’re very generous.

We looked around for a bed and frame for our new bed, but that stuff is really expensive. If it were made out of gold then fine, spend $1600 for a new bed frame. Or maybe if we’d had some more money to throw towards new furniture. It would have been easier, that’s for sure. Instead, we opted to buy a mattress and box spring and make the bed.

We began by finding plans online. We read them and reread them, then read them just once more to make sure this was within the scope of our knowledge. Because we didn’t a saw, we took the cut list to Home Depot and they made all of the cuts for us. We also picked up some things we didn’t have, such as wood putty and finishing screws.

It cost us about $160 in materials (we already had the paint) to make the bed. That’s it. Jason was out in the garage for a while when we got off of work, and spent a few hours there on the weekends. While we didn’t get it up in time for Garrett and Emily’s visit, it’s up now. And it’s beautiful. Upon seeing it, I squealed “It’s a professional bed!” As if our bed had been at amateur status just to give the Olympics a whirl. What I meant was that it looked like a professional bed maker had made the bed instead of my husband. I mean, he’s an Eagle Scout so I should have known it would all be alright.

Things To Note:
1) Wood is super porous. There are two coats of primer and four coats of paint on the bed. There was a treatment (the wood conditioner, I believe) that we could have done to the wood to make it less porous but because we were all gung-ho and thought we would have it done by the end of December, we didn’t do it. I kind of wish we had.

2) Caulk is our best friend. We painted our bed white, and because of the aforementioned paint-sucking issue that the wood had, there were a few places, namely between the planks, where the paint just kind of disappeared. Enter caulk. We caulked between the boards, let it dry, and then put another coat of paint on. There are no longer any gaps.

3) This was our first project and we still have a lot to learn. We had no idea it would take this long. Maybe if we had conditioned the wood the process could have been a little less time consuming, especially with regard to the zillion layers of primer and paint.

4) I have said this about a million times, but take some pictures of the process. We took none (surprise, surprise). Even though the building of the bed isn’t necessarily difficult (those plans are so straight forward), it would have been nice to look at the whole thing taking shape. Alas.

Building the bed has started a DIY fever within us. We now have plans for floor-to-ceiling bookcases, end tables, and crown moulding that we’re dreaming of building, as well as repainting and reknobing a dresser we bought. It’s fun, and the pride Jason feels over having built the bed makes me want to go build something now. I won’t, though. I will need constant supervision. Power tools scare the crap out of me.