(2020)

Crafting ‘cause Covid.

Sometime in between the birth of Covid and just past our wedding date (Sept 2020), I decided that our bed frame wasn't just doing it anymore. You know. The “watch your fingers when you put this 40 year-old metal frame together then have to redo it anyways cause you put the locking lug in the wrong hole” kind of frame? That kind. Plus, my wife was looking at wanting a bed that she could use for hide—storage of her totes underneath.

We were in luck! We knew a guy that had very…VERY LITTLE knowledge of woodworking, but watched enough YouTube and bent lamination he figured he would make an honest “go” at it.

So…I…drew up some plans, did some measurements, figured how high I wanted the lowest part of the bed to be for my wife’s totes and off to the Big Orange Box store I went. I wanted an array of wood grains to, I dunno, give off a “wow, you know what you’re doing!” vibe. It worked? I picked out what was available there: Pine, Pine, Pine, some Red Oak, and some Cedar. Perfect.

After watching a gazillion videos of bent lamination, I knew I wanted at least our headboard to have a curve. So with all the lumber I purchased I also got a few sheets of 3/4 MDF to make my forms for bending.

I sliced up some 2x4’s, made my form, did my glue-up, and I will say, for my first time I was actually pretty impressed. Not so much on the “afterwards” of making the awesome bend…How am I going to secure this? I’ll just say after 5 years of marriage, it has stood the test of half a decade and has NEVER gave us any trouble.

Anyways. This was a long project to say in the least. In the end, I was and still am proud of making this queen sized bed frame with head/foot boards. Putting it all together so that it wouldn’t cave in on us was also no easy task. I bought some locking lug mounts with matching hooks to go over them and secured them to the frame and the bed posts. Eh. They “worked”. The bed was still shaky. I ended having to improvise and do away with those things.

This is one of my most memorable projects and glad I figured it out and made it happen.

A wooden bed frame without a mattress in a bedroom, with a nightstand, lamp, curtains, and a wall hanging in the background.
Wooden framing in a workshop with tools and a window in the background.
A partially assembled wooden headboard in a cluttered workshop with tools and storage bins in the background.
Close-up of a wooden curved structure in a woodworking workshop with tools and supplies in the background.
A partially assembled wooden bed frame in a garage, with a headboard, side panels, and a wooden board lying on the ground.
unfinished wooden headboard with a curved top and diagonal panel design in a workshop or garage setting
Unfinished wooden headboard leaning against a white wall in a garage, with a partially visible exercise machine on the left and a long wooden plank on the right.