The Snowball... it's back.

The bed project has exploded.

I mentioned in my previous blog entry that my bed broke.  The frame is made of pressboard, and didn't take well to being taken apart and rebuilt the many, many times that I've moved or rearranged the house.  The pressboard broke apart, so I set about a mission to make myself a new bed.

Here's the thing:  I need storage.  Although I prefer a farmhouse bed, I thought I should make the storage bed, so I planned a hybrid of the two... storage frame with farmhouse headboard.  I went shopping for the wood, during which time I had an AHA moment - right there in front of God and Home Depot - and I figured out how to fix my original bed.   For $2, no less.

Wouldn't that have been great if I could solve my whole bed problem for $2?


I fixed it that night.   Easy, peasy - I unscrewed the swiss cheese pressboard pieces, and replaced them with real wood.  The frame is hidden, so it didn't have to be pretty.  I just used a chop saw, too many screws and a lot of glue.  

However, if you think I walked away from the idea of the new bed that easily, you don't know me very well.  I'm like a dog with a bone when I get these projects into my head.  So, of course I also bought most of the wood that I needed to make the storage bed base. The next day I went to pick up what I need for the farmhouse headboard, and I ended up at a specialty wood store, where a nice old guy who clearly knew his stuff took me under his wing.

I ended up coming home with birdseye (really nice grain) pine boards that were clearly cut from the same tree.  Even better that it was on sale, so I came away with the makings for a whole farmhouse bed for under $100.

Oh, yeah - did I forget to mention that I'm making a farmhouse bed now as well as the storage bed?  Here's the thing: that birdseye wood is too pretty to be painted.  It needs to be stained, but the storage bed has to be painted.  I still need the storage bed, so I'll make that for the spare room (started already... took a break for Christmas) and then I'll make the farmhouse bed for my room.  My bed - which is a red oak sleigh bed and still quite nice - will be retired until I finish the basement and add another bedroom.

Don't bother being impressed by my mad carpentry skills, though.    I've already wasted a half a sheet of plywood because of my inability to measure properly and cut a straight line.