Hello Friends!
I’m so excited to be joining you here at DIY Passion today! Isn’t this place fabulous? I just love reading all about Erin & Dan’s projects, and I’m honored to get to share one of mine with y’all. Before we get to the DIY Bed Frame, let’s give a quick intro, shall we? Here’s a quick little bit about myself:
My name is Leah and I am the blogger behind Life, Lemons & Lemonade. I love to do projects of all kinds. There’s something about a before and after that just makes my heart go pitter-patter. But before I began to blog about my love of all things DIY, I started with my story. A story of life, love, a long battle with chronic illness, infertility, adoption and the road to realizing who I am, what I want and pursuing my dreams. Now its turned into a lovely mix of all those things. If you’d like to read my whole story, you can find it here.
Alright, enough about me! Let’s get on to the good stuff. Hubbalicious and I recently moved into a teeny little house, that we absolutely love. Unfortunately, we’re renting it and haven’t been able to get the landlord to allow us to make any changes yet (don’t worry, we’re still working on him). In the meantime, our bedroom is tiny and storage is scarce. So we’ve been throwing around the idea of a DIY Bed Frame for a while.
Surprisingly, over the course of our marriage, we’ve never purchased a bedroom suite. I just can’t seem to get on board with them. So we were in between bed frames, having just moved in and left most everything behind. We knew we really needed the under-bed storage, so we started to make a plan. That Handy Hubbalicious of mine really came through this time. I gave him a broad idea of what I wanted and he put the plans in place. Of course, we made a couple mistakes and learned some things along the way (isn’t that what it’s all about?), but we corrected them and I think it turned out pretty great for our very first one!
DIY BED FRAME & HEAD BOARD
After a couple weeks of putting pen to paper and designing what we wanted and measuring everything 46 times, we headed to The Home Depot and got started. To save on cost, we decided to go with regular pine 2×4’s to actually build the frame, and then finish it out with cedar planks. We created a makeshift work station on our deck. While I’m very grateful to have a deck this size where we can comfortably work… we were sorely missing our garage where we could easily leave our tools without fear of the rain and elements.
We also bought 4×4 cedar posts for the joints and industrial piping for the legs. Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the pipes, but you’ll see it on the finished product. (sorry!) The post was only available in 8 ft lengths, so we had to cut it down to size (yay for leftover wood!!).
Don’t let the evidence of Hubbalicious’ previous misfortune with a table saw in this picture, scare you. Once upon a time, he did cut nearly the entire tip of his finger off, but we made it through this project unharmed. :o) *Sorry Hubs, just had to throw that in there!
Once we had all the pieces cut (and after a corrected miscalculation) we started laying out all the pieces and putting together the frame. We started by screwing the metal brackets on the joint posts and then putting the 2×4’s in. Then we screwed in the middle pieces.
One of my very favorite things about this whole project (aside from getting a bed that I love) was watching my son “work” with Daddy. He just loves to be outside and participate in whatever project we may have going on at that moment. It was so cute, that maybe we even let him stay up as we worked well into the night.
Man I like that kid, and if you’re so inclined, you can read more about our adoption journey here. Okay, so once we had the middle pieces screwed in and everything was nice and stable, we added the pipe legs. Like so:
The awesome thing about these legs, is that they are separate pieces. The two rounds can just screw on and off of the pipe. So we screwed the first round onto the joint, and then added the pipe and second round. Which means, that when we want to move the bed, we can easily remove the legs to fit through small doors and tiny hallways (our house was built in the 50’s). So now it looks like this:
Oh, that’s Keno. He’s our Pitbull / Schnauser mix that we adopted right before we got married. He just celebrated his 11th birthday y’all. We love him something fierce. Isn’t he cute?
Next, we added the slats for stability. We have a king size tempurpedic and I have moved it more times than I care to admit… It’s. Heavy. So these slats are evenly spaced and nailed in with finishing nails to keep them in place, but pull off easily if necessary.
BAM! The bed frame is finished! It’s sitting a little crooked in this picture since we’re on the grass, but I promise, it’s level. Hubs is nothing if not particular about things being level. Should we take a look at the headboard? Let’s do it.
As I mentioned earlier, the bedroom we’re in is TINY. And to add insult to injury, the walls are painted a very dark grey (which makes it feel even smaller), with a weird fake brick accent wall. Since the landlord has yet to give his consent to paint, we were after a large feature type headboard that would take up most of the wall. And my friends, that’s exactly what we got.
We started by staining the cedar planks in Minwax Early American with 2 coats. I was so nervous to pick out a stain, but I absolutely love how this one turned out. First, we sampled on an extra leftover piece of wood.
We decided to assemble the headboard and then sand and stain it. You really could go either way, but we just thought this seemed easier. We used cedar pickets from The Home Depot that were unfinished and sold at a great price, cut them to different lengths and then nailed them onto 2×4 posts.
And then after the 2 coats dried over night, we added 2 coats of Minwax Polyurethane. Nicole Curtis from Rehab Addict says she always uses the Satin finish… and I pretty much love her, so that’s what we went with. :o)
Guess what we did next? It’s my favorite part… We totally stenciled our name on the footboard. It was no small amount of work. So much so that it took both of us to hold the stencils down, so I didn’t get any pictures of the process, but I do have this:
Okay friends… We’re ready for the finished product. I’m so excited to show you how this huge labor of love turned out and hear what you think!! So, without further ado, I bring to you our brand new DIY Bed Frame.
Oh, that’s Josie. She makes a cute bedmate, don’t you think? Okay, enough about Josie… what do you think? I think it adds the perfect amount of nature into our house! I’m just so in love.
Now, I just need to get some new bedding… because our existing set is just not that impressive against that big awesome bed. We’re also looking forward to embellishing the headboard in some way. Perhaps with a painted quote that sentimental for us. We’re not sure yet… But I’ll be glad to update you when we decide! You might also notice that we didn’t include pictures of the bed in our room. Weeeelllllll, let’s just chalk that up to the fact that our room is tiny and we’re not totally unpacked yet. I’d love to update you with pics of our room as well, once we get it all settled in. :o)
Thanks so much for tuning in and following along on our journey! It was such a great experience to build this bed. Not just because it was something we could do as a family (which was great all on it’s own) but also because we learned SO much. We already have ideas of how we can improve our process. And you know what’s so great about it? If we can do it, you can do it. We don’t have any special qualifications or even experience. I do have a talented husband… but that’s where our qualifications begin and end. :o) What do you think? Any thoughts of making your own DIY Bed Frame?
If you’re interested in the plans with measurements and specifications, you can download them here for free! A HUGE thanks to Erin & Dan for inviting me to share on their lovely site, and to you for reading! It was fun to meet y’all and I hope to see you again soon. If you do build a bed, be sure to tag me on Instagram @lifelemonsandlemonade, or post it on my FB page! Happy Building!
