Look at the real estate below!
Yes, I left out the drawers....stop groaning ...there's a method to my madness and I absolutely adore the sleek look. Not to mention all the money I save on knobs! Allows me to splurge on these beauties.
By the way, that flush pull was a real bear to get in, because of the way it protrudes in the back it requires mortising the block of wood under it. Here's my template. I used a forstner bit to drill the hole and a chisel to square off the top. Lots of extra work, but I like how they look and function.
Anyway, this is what I started with of the old bed, yep, that's all I reused! The back rail and two sides....
I used a kreg jig to build my framework mostly out of 1x2's and a few 1x3's. A couple of things I did note ......You really need a corded drill, the battery ones just don't work as well and the kreg holes end up ragged. Second, spend sometime thinking about where you want your holes to end up. My completed frame looks like this.
See those center three horizontal sections? Well it turns out that the holes lined up with the hinge screws, so I had to fill them all with plugs. Of course I didn't discover this until after the bed was installed ....because I very easily could have flipped them over and screwed them from underneath. But once it was attached to the wall I wasn't taking it off again.
One last thing, I sprayed the whole frame with Poly to give it some protection. Which in turn makes the wood plugs very difficult to fit in the holes! I didn't think that one through. I did mask off all the surfaces I didn't want to get poly on (because glue won't adhere well to it) At least I remembered that!
I used birch bender board for the front. The radius on the plywood corners was 4 inches. Would have been tough to go any smaller. I finished the wood first, and that made bending it a little more difficult. Speaking of the finish, I used three coats of Zinsser amber shellac, cut with denatured alcohol (cut 5 parts shellac to two parts alcohol) and finished with three coats of the General Finishes Arm R Seal in gloss). The most time consuming of the whole project was waiting for that Arm R Seal to dry.
Come to find out that General Finishes don't really recommend using the Arm R Seal over waxed shellac, evidently it can cause adhesion problems. I did contact another person on Airforums (InsideOut) who used this same finish on her 56 Safari. She said they've had no problems and it's been five years so I think I'm okay. I had blue tape all over it with no lifting issues. I might throw on Zinsser Sanding Sealer over the shellac before putting on the Arm R Seal just to be safe on everything else.
I glued the front on with Titebond III and brad nailed it to the frame. Note to self; ask Santa for more clamps! . Poker sets are heavy but they don't make great clamps.
Yes, I'm working inside in my Living room, turns out a pool table is an excellent place to build furniture! In my defense, I did put plastic down!
Then the top was routed with a flush bit.
The tedious award goes to painting all the resulting edges with paint !
Some other favorite tools for this project:
I spent a lot of time getting the bed frame square. Love this little Doohickey.
Also, you know when you are brad nailing and you miss the frame because you can't tell where it is? Super Annoying. Well this little item is great! Basically it's an elastic cord that tells you where you need to nail.
Can you tell I spent some time in a Rockler store recently? They'd be nice Stocking stuffers!
