Lauren's Bed - Part 6 - Final Assembly

We let the completed bed air out for a week in the house before moving it into Lauren's room.  Both Joshua and Lauren gave me a hand assembling the bed.

Once the bed was assembled, Rosemary gave me a hand moving the mattress into place, then made up Lauren's big girl bed for the first time!  Rosemary found a good deal on a polar bear comforter to keep Lauren warm.

Before Lauren could use the bed I finished up the install by adding some safety rails on the open side of the bed.  Nothing to exciting about the construction, just four boards with a 1/4" round-over on all sides.  They are held in place with 90 degree metal brackets that are screwed into the mattress support boards.  The safety rails are screwed together with 1 1/2" wood screws.

Lauren loves sleeping in her big girl bed!  At nap time in the afternoon she climbs in by herself when she gets sleepy.

I seem to have trouble finishing projects.  This one needs one more thing before it is really done.  I'm not sure when it'll get completed as I've already moved on to other projects!  The legs in the foot board don't have any end cap on them - I plan on adding some sort of removable castle decoration but didn't get around to finishing it before I assembled the bed.  Bed still works though :)

This bed was a fun and pretty simply project to do.  The curly maple wood I worked with was frustrating to work with at times, but we are really pleased with the final look.  My biggest regret is the middle panel in the top of the head board - it's colour does not match the rest of the bed.  I'm not sure how I missed that when I was assembling the bed, but it's what I notice every time I look at the bed.

One other improvement that I'll probably add to the bed is to add a lip to the top shelf of the head board.  Things keep sliding or rolling off to fall behind the bed and a 1" lip on the top would help a great deal.  I can still add it to the finished bed and I'll probably add that the same time I finish off the leg posts - any day now...

Lauren's Bed - Part 5 - Rails and Finishing

Just a few things left to finish off the bed - it's time now for the bed rails, mattress slats and some finishing.

Before cutting any wood I dug through the pile and picked the straightest boards that were 6" or greater in width.  There weren't many candidates.  I found one good one and settled on the other as the best of the worst.  After running them through the planer and jointer I had two reasonably straight boards.  Next up was rounding over the corners and for that I used a 1/4" round-over bit in my hand held router.

The bed hardware I got from Lee Valley had hooks to attach the rails to the head and foot boards.  I decided the best way to attach them to the rails was to mortise for the hooks, then screw them in place after finishing.  I figured this would be the strongest way to attach them.

After tracing the outline of the hook I used a 1/4" straight cutting bit in the router to cut really close to the line.  I finished up the mortise with a couple of chisels and got reasonably good fits on all of the hooks.

Before moving onto the finishing, I attach some support rails onto the bed rails.  The mattress slats will rest on these supports when the bed is assembled.  I glued the supports in place, no fasteners, just clamps to hold them overnight.

While waiting for the rails to dry I plane the poplar for the mattress slats down to 15/16", then cross cut them to size on the mitre saw.  I'll leave them unfinished as they'll be hidden under the mattress.

After the rails finished drying I moved everything upstairs to my 'finishing' room.  The bed rails head board and foot boards all received two coats of Watco Danish Oil, Natural.  My favourite finish at the moment, wipe it on, let it dry, wipe it on again then wipe off the excess.  Piece of cake.

After letting the Watco oil dry for an hour, I attached the hardware, then brought the project into the house to let it dry inside.  The oil finish has an odour that takes at least a week to go away, and we'll wait until the smell is gone before moving it into Lauren's bedroom.

Both kids were very excited to see the new bed.  They gave me a hand with a test assembly of the bed :

Lauren's Bed - Part 4 - Finishing Foot Board

The next step in completing this bed is finishing off the foot board.  After the top and bottom caps were dry, I needed to do some work on the posts to get them solidly to the foot board.

Before starting that I needed to cut mortises for the bed mounting hardware.  I decided to use bedlocks and hooks from Lee Valley to attach the bed rails to the legs.  I used a 3/8" spiral upcut bit and an edge guide on the router to cut the mortise for the bed hook.  For some additional work I decided to also rout out a recess to accept the flat part of the bedlock that is screwed into the leg.  I did these mortises freehand with a 1/4" straight cutting bit in the router after tracing the outline onto the leg.

The slot mortise is taller so that the hook on the rail can be slid in and then lowered into the bedlock.




The legs will be attached to the frame with 3/8" dowels.  To make sure my drilling was accurate, I picked up a set of four drill guides from Lee Valley.  After making a custom jig to fit the legs, I used a 5/8" bit to drill holes where I wanted to place the dowels.  I then knock a bushing with a hammer into those holes, then screw a 3/8" insert into the bushing.  The 3/8" insert ensures that the the hole I drill for the dowel is precisely placed and 90 degrees to the leg.

After the holes in the legs were drilled, I added spacers to on the inside of the jig and reused the jig to drill the dowel holes in the foot board panel.



Once all the holes were drilled, I glue up the end panel.  The dowels all lined up perfectly.




With the end panel complete, I used a half dozen biscuits to glue the top onto the headboard.



Now all that's left is to :

• make the bed rails
• apply finish to the bed rails, head and foot boards
• cut the poplar slats that will be the mattress supports
• safety rail
  

Lauren's Bed - Part 3 - Head board

The head board panels will be just about the same as the foot board and construction was the same. The most tedious part was gluing up the six panels for the head board. Once again the curly maple was a bear to work with. For the last three panels I gave up on resawing and just planed the 1" boards down to 1/4". A waste of wood but much less hassle than the resawing.

I again pre-finished the panels with two coats of Watco Danish Oil, then glued up the panels. The bottom panel has longer rails that will form the legs of the headboard.

Next was gluing up the panels for the two sides, shelf and top of the headboard. The sides and shelf are 8" in width, the top is 9 1/2" so all three were glue-ups. After the glue-up was dry I ran the pieces through my drum sander to smooth them out and get rid of the tear-out caused by the planer.

Once the panels were ready I cut a whole bunch of biscuits to line everything up then used all the long clamps I had to glue up the head board. The top shelf will be added later after the rest has dried.

While waiting for that to dry I gave the foot board caps a 1/2" roundover, then glued the top and bottom caps onto the footboard. I used biscuits to align the parts.

Lauren's Bed - Part 2 - Foot board

With the posts for the foot board complete, it was time to move on to the frame and panel construction for the foot board itself. I dug through the pile of curly maple to find relatively straight pieces, then used my planer sled to flatten the boards.

Next I used the tablesaw and mitre saw to cut all the pieces to size. I used the dado blade to cut a 1/4" groove through all the boards, then used the same dado blade to cut the tenons on the ends of the rails and stiles as needed.

A quick dry fit to make sure everything lines up :

The caps on the top and bottom will get a 1/2" roundover on all four edges to smooth them out, then they'll be secured to the foot board with biscuits.

Next I needed to glue up some boards for the panels. I started with some ugly twisted pieces :

I again used the planer sled and smoothed them out so they were straight :

Then over to the bandsaw to resaw them in half. Actually, I first tried one on the tablesaw but as I started to cut it pinched the blade and stopped the tablesaw. The 3hp tablesaw. Ouch. After resetting the breaker I brought it over to the bandsaw and got it done, though it again reacted pretty badly to being cut apart.

After gluing up the panels, I ran them through the drum sander for about 45 minutes to flatten them out. Quite tedious.

Now a dry fit of the entire assembly :

After sanding the panels with my random orbital sander to 220 grit, I applied Watco Danish Oil. After the finish was dry I glued up the entire panel except for the caps :

Lauren's Bed - Step 1 - Posts

Our daughter Lauren is starting to outgrow her crib. She can climb into it by herself and if she thought about it she could climb out - which would no doubt end in a fall. So it's time she moves into a big girl bed.

I built a bunk bed for Joshua and want to do the same thing for Lauren. I built his bed out of construction lumber following a plan from Canadian Home Workshop. After struggling with that construction lumber I decided I would never do that again. As I wrote earlier, I ended up buying 100 board feet of curly maple from my wood guy.

Even before I finalized the design of the bed, I knew that my first task would be to build up some posts for the foot board of the bed. That's the first thing I started with.

This is when I found out how not fun it is to work with this curly maple. Depending on the grain of the wood, I found both the jointer and the planer take big gouges out of the wood. I had to use the drum sander to clean up all of the pieces for the legs. Since the drum sander removes material very slowly this was very time-consuming. Also the kiln dried lumber I was working with was very reactionary - every piece I cut would warp and twist. It was very aggravating to put it mildly. I'm assuming that the guy who put it in the kiln dried it too quickly. I will not be buying KD wood from him again.

I tried a couple of test pieces before I built the real things. I first tried cutting 45 degree miters on the edges of the boards to glue up, but they were tricky to line up for gluing. I next looked into buying a lock-miter bit, but those seemed too expensive for this one use. I ended up cutting a 7/8" rabbet on the edge of each board, leaving 1/8" of material on the face, then gluing them together. After rounding over the edge with a 1/4" round over bit they look very solid.

The first post I glued all four sides together at once. I thought I had enough clamps and had all the joints tight but alas I did not. After unclamping I found that a few of the joints were very visible.

For the next post I glued up two pieces at a time, using some simple cauls to maintain pressure across the entire joint.

After the two pairs were dry I glued them up with more clamps and cauls. The second post came out much better.

Here's a sketchup picture of the joinery I used.