The Time I Built a Bed - Planning and Lumber

My bedroom is...modest in size. There is no closet in my room, only a crawl space. I had lived for two years without a box spring or bed frame because of the narrow stairs in my last apartment, so I wasn't daunted by the narrow stairs in the house. I brought my two full-size mattresses and left the box springs behind. For 6 months, I slept on a mattress on the floor. Not terrible, but not the home-sweet-home complete bedroom I was looking for in my first house.

After shopping around for a suitable bed to get my mattress off the floor so I could begin a life of living like an adult, I decided my budget precluded even Ikea furniture. (Even though I love the Hemnes and Malm beds.) And I didn't have the patience to go the Craigslist/thrift route for this project.

So, I decided to build a platform for my bed. Experience? A short stint at Habitat for Humanity taught me to drive screws and cut and measure competently. And my mom and dad passively let me try every craft and construction project I could muster with their limited tools and supplies, so I never fully learned that some jobs are best left to professionals. Lucky for me!

So I hit Instructables and picked out a very simple plan, then made a few modifications.

Despite the low ceilings in my bedroom, and the limited choices about where to put a bed (giant radiator, door, and door to crawl space take up 3 walls), I decided I wanted a bed tall enough to provide lots of storage.

My brother, in his teeny Volkswagen GTI, came with me to the lumber store and stood by patiently while I rattled off numbers like I knew what they meant. (I did know what they meant, after reading the Instructables directions and calculating, calculating and re-calculating my changes to keep this bed low-waste. It's just difficult to sound that confident when you are a first-time shopper in a real-live lumber store.) Then we crammed (I believe) nine 10-foot boards into that poor little clown car.

The plan (my baker's brain wants to call it a recipe every time) called for #3 lumber. These are sort of ugly boards with a certain amount of knot holes and imperfections. These don't affect the sturdiness of the bed and they help keep the cost low. My local building supply place that is not Lowe's or Home Depot only carried #2 and #1 boards, so I had to spend a little more. It was still a big improvement over the warped and rough boards from the big home improvement stores. I spent about $70 on lumber and wood screws of two different lengths.

On the way home, I sat behind Sean so we could run the lumber all the way from the dashboard out the tailgate. The lumber dude looked on dubiously when Sean pulled the GTI up to the door, and then just stood back and appreciated the moment as we slid board after board after board into the vehicle. I held on for dear life as we drove home, as if I could stop those 10-foot planks from sliding out the back of the car if they so chose.

I tried to only hum circus music under my breath, because Sean does not like to acknowledge that he drives a clown car and gets mad when I sing it out loud, even though I mean it with the utmost respect because in what non-clown vehicle could you cram this much lumber and still be able to park in compact car spaces?

No? Still offensive to the owners of compact and speedy cars? OK, then. Noted.

We hauled all the wood into the house.and stacked it up between the kitchen and the dining room, where we proceeded to trip on it for about 5 days until I had a chance to get to buildin'! Looks super convenient, doesn't it?