Building The Guest Bed: Parker's Perspective

If you have read this blog long or know us personally, you know Parker is really into woodworking. He has built almost every piece of furniture in our home, and he absolutely loves it. I love it too, obviously! I blogged about our new guest room earlier this month, and Parker decided to write about the inspiration and work that went into the guest bed. Take it away, husband!

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Intro

For sometime now I have been looking forward to building a guest suite. For whatever reason, be it space in our house, space in our new house, or .... flight school, I haven't gotten to create anything. Lucky for me, between assignments here in Norfolk I found a little time to build a guest bed.

Inspiration

I originally imagined a sleek bed design, similar to something you might see in a hotel. Simple lines, low profile, and a dark stain. After browsing around a little on the pottery barn website, I found something a little different. To be precise, two things a little different.

Upholstered Headboard

Crownmolding Headboard

The Build

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. I could tell you all about what I did, but at the end of the day, it is more fun just to look at pictures!

Some of you may know that we recently moved to Virginia. One of the difficult parts about working at our new home is that there is no “shop” aka garage. Lucky for me, the weather cooperated and my gorgeous assistant was always there to help!

There are two ways to do most things in life: the right way and the cheap way. What ended up being the most challenging part of the bed making experience was using 2x4s instead of glued 1x4s. Although inexpensive (The bed frame itself only cost like $24), the wood was hard to work with because it was not perfectly square. Not a problem on the last bed I made with 2x4’s because my grandfather has both a joiner and a planer. Definitely a problem for this project! You can kind of see it in the picture of the bed frame above

Proud carpentry moment: I used my router and a chisel to make an inset for the bed hardware. Although Slightly sloppy, it ended up looking good with just a little putty and some paint!

Assembling the frame was a cinch with Kreg screws

And adding trim and the topper was a cinch with my little helper!

We also tacked some trim onto an old side table to serve as a nightstand. For the record: this is just a placeholder till a future date. It can be very fun thinking of ways to reuse things you already have.

One part of the project that I always seem to forget about is the finishing part. No matter how cool a project is, it is not finished until you add some combination of stain/paint/poly. And of course, this always seems to take way longer than actually building the thing. If I could make one part of woodworking disappear with my mind, it would be this part.

The last part of the project was figuring out how to upholster the head board. Not pictured: the janky back with a mismatching pattern of staples, bunting and fabric

The final product!

Final Thoughts

Hopefully you have had fun seeing a (little) bit of the process of building a bed. Chelsea and I had a lot of fun making it and look forward to having family and friends in town to enjoy it.

And for the numbers people out there:

Total Days: 7

Build Days: 3

Finishing Days: “4”

Kreg screws: 18

Paint used: ½ gallon (this includes chelseas desk and the nightstand)

Approximate Cost: $350 (sans mattress)

PS As a little sales pitch, not only is carpentry productive, but it is economical and entertaining. Chelsea has had a few people contact her privately and express interest in a blog series about getting into woodworking as a hobby. Where to start, what to buy, and how to get those creative woodworking juices flowing. Let us know in the comments below if that is something you would be interested in.