Hand-Built Bed

When Drew and I moved into our house, our (old) bed couldn't fit up our staircase. I never totally loved that bed. It was a mahogany-colored sleigh bed that we received as a wedding gift. It was pretty, but it was taller than I like and the worst part for me was that it creaked. For the first little while in our new house, we just slept on the mattress thrown right on the floor. We've made an effort to only allow things into our house that we absolutely love. So, when I started to look for beds that I really loved, there were only a few of them and they were all $5,000 or more which isn't in the budget. 

My mom showed me how to use a drill, a kreg jig, and a pad sander when we built our dining table, so I figured I could just build my own perfect bed. I wanted it to look like driftwood to go along with the cool colored cape-cod-style board and baton that we put up in the summertime. I modified Ana White's Farmhouse Bed plan for my bed. I lowered the height the whole bed, because I like the mattress to be at chair height so when I get up in the morning I can sit comfortably to do my arthritis exercises. 

I bought the wood for the posts, side rails, and backing pieces of the head and foot boards, then had it cut at Home Depot. I had scrap 1x4's for the top finishing pieces. And the best part of all, I got all of the decorative scrap chunks for free!

I started out by connecting the posts to their backing boards. After that I just started hacking out scraps with a jig saw and gluing them wherever they fit. I had a few face clamps to hold things together while the glue dried. Once all the scraps were secure, I stood up the head board and foot board (and man, are they heavy!) and attached the smooth 1 x 4 finishing piece on the top. I packed all the cracks with wood filler, then sanded and stained. To get the driftwood look I wanted I used one coat of Minwax Grey wood stain with just one coat of polyurethane protective coating, because I didn't want it to get glossy.

I love the gorgeous grain of the wood and the variety of color all the scraps bring out.