My dad is visiting me this week. It has long been in the plans to deal with the fact that my bed is on the floor, and has been for many months. I kept going back to the idea of IKEA, but their beds are so expensive for what they are, driving 2.5 hours one way is a huge hassle, and shipping costs as much as the bed. After much debate, we decided to build a bed from scratch. I found these instructions online but felt they could use a little tweaking. I added a midbeam and the slats meet the edge of the box frame rather than hanging over. Oh, and mine? It’s prettier.
So here’s how I did it. Remember, measure twice, cut once!
1. Measure your bed. Mine is 80″x 60″ x 10″. How did I know? It’s on the tag.
2. Make a drawing of a rectangle and put a line through the middle longways. I didn’t do this until it was too late and my brain had nearly asploded from all the math.
3. On your drawing, subtract 2 inches from the long side and make that the written height. Subtract 5 inches from the short side and make that the width. Subtract 3 inches from the starting long side length and make that the length of the midbeam.
4. Go shopping. For my queen bed we needed 6 2×4′s and 12 slats (we used glued together 2×4′s for the legs, and they were 16 inches, not 12. Too high!). So here’s the cut list for a queen bed:
2–2×4 cut to 78″ (long sides)
2–2×4 cut to 55″ (short sides)
12–1×4 cut to 57″ (slats)
4–4×4 cut to 12 inches (or glue together 2 2×4′s)
a box of 2.5 inch screws
4–casters
18–3.5 inch lag screws
18–washers
stain (optional)
Tools: You’ll need a drill with a screwdriver bit, a 1/2 inch bit for the casters, and a 1/4 inch bit for the lag screws, a socket or monkey wrench, a hammer, and a T-square or some kind of squaring tool
5. Stain. Everything. Don’t use an oil-based stain or a stain mixed with polyurethane , we learned that the hard way. Make sure you rub down all the excess. Don’t forget to stain the ends of the longest 2×4′s.
6. On a big empty floor, start assembling the box to hold the slats. Just lay it all out for now. Note: The long sides go on the outsides of the corners!
7. Pick a corner. Square it. Put one leg on the inside of the corner. Drill a hole for one lag screw all the way into the leg, insert the screw with a washer, hammer it in to set it, and tighten it with the socket wrench until it’s almost tight. Square the leg. Drill the 2nd hole on the same side and insert the lag screw the same way. Now square again, and do the same on the other side of the leg. Do this for all four legs.
8. Place the midbeam piece in the very center of the rectangle longways, and screw it in with 4 lag screws so that the 2×4 is sitting perpendicular to the ground–vertically.
9. Flip the bed over. You’ll have to do a little math to know exactly how much space is required between each slat, but mine was 3.27 inches. Screw in all the slats with 3 screws each, one on each side and one in the midbeam.
10. Flip it over one more time and drill the holes for the casters and insert.
That’s it, you’re done!
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