how to build a bed | making Life pretty

For the first two months of living together the fiance and I shared a full sized extra bouncy bed. By November my lack of quality night sleeps found me begging for him to switch to a permanent midnight schedule and eying the couch as a sanctuary. We moved into the studio where the futon was way less bouncy and the sleeping area was ever so slightly larger. This was November… by May we both agreed that our secret hideout wasn’t cutting it anymore and it was time to invest in a bigger bed.

We agreed on a Queen sized Simmon’s Beautyrest and were beyond excited to get that sucker home. The catch was buying a mattress meant buying a bed frame. And buying a bed frame was not going to be an easy task. Everything I was finding was either too expensive for frugal me or simply not what I was looking for.

I wanted this:

Fabulous raw weathered modern yet vintage in a sense perfection.

I didn’t want this:

$1,500 price tag.

Our solution? When you can’t buy it, build it, of course!

In 1 day off, future hubs built a bed. In case you were wondering this is one of the reasons he is “the future hubs”. My fabulous man built my dream bed with my dream price tag to boot!

After he was finished with his end of the deal it was my turn to take the reigns. Finishing the wood to get that reclaimed feel. Before Brendan even started assembly I brewed a beyond strong batch of coffee and dumped it onto the 4 boards that were going to be the sides of the bed. I even applied the coffee grounds for extra effect. We left it to soak in for a few hours. It actually didn’t do as much as I had hoped but did take away that brand new yellow wood look. The coffee grounds left more concentrated saturated dark areas. This made the wood like like it was covered in years of ground in dirt or dust. Exactly what I was hoping for.

Brendan then assembled the bed loosely using a tutorial from Ana White. (We love her.) The only change we made was in the legs. The bed she designed sits very low to the ground. We wanted to be able to have basket storage underneath. (Ya know for those 2 or 3 bags of clothes and things that STILL haven’t been unpacked yet.) So we switched out the square legs for 4×4 posts. Using a chop saw he added the angled cut detail to mimic the bed that I initially fell for.

As for the stain. First coat was Cabot in “Shaded Bark”. It was applied with a foam brush. After I finished I realized that the stain was way more red than I was looking for. We let coat #1 fully dry and after another trip to Lowes I returned with Olympic Maximum in “Sierra” for the second coat. Second coat stain was a semi transparent so more like super watery paint than stain. I figured this more opaque option would hide the red better than another transparent stain. Sure enough it did the trick. I managed to tone down the red and also added some “authentic” brush strokes.

After some much needed dry time we attached the legs with some “L” brackets recommended by the local hardware store. (Thanks Beckerle Lumber) It was the best way to attach the legs sans visible screws, while still keeping the legs in place without wiggling away from the frame. We also added a screw from the top through the support triangle for good measure.

All that was left to do was add the slats across the frame. Screw them into place and then request delivery of our new mattress. YAY! Needless to say we are beyond happy with the results.