Walnut Bed is done!

I got the bed done last week as promised just in time for the scout for Better Homes and Gardens to come by and look at the house. She liked it and they snapped about 30 pictures of the place to show to the editors. I don't know when I will know something about if they want to shoot the house or not. My friend Bob Greenspan is going to be taking the photos and he said that a local magazine he shoots for is interested as well. So hopefully one of these will pan out and you all can be looking at pictures of the house in a mag. Barrett came over and took some pictures while I had the place cleaned up. Here is a shot of the bed and the nightstand. As you can tell it didn't take Bella long to find her spot and do some power napping.

Busy Weekend

I had some exciting news last week this Wed. a scout for Better Homes and Gardens is coming to take a look at our house to see if they are interested in photographing it. Jessica is out of town on vacation so that nominates me to get the house all cleaned up and ready. It also made me tackle projects I had been procrastinating on for months. So look for some really nice pictures of the place at the end of the week.

Back of Bed headboard.

The bed prior to being disassembled for finishing.

Bed Progress

Well I enjoyed the unusually cool weather this past weekend and made some serious progress on the bed. I've begun to make a big push to get this and a few other little jobs done I'm hoping to get the house photographed sometime late summer. So here is the base of the bed all assembled it went together extremely well and is rock solid. I may add a few more reinforcements but I'm going to wait till I get the headboard on and see how that stiffens it up. Since its bee so long you have to look back a ways to find the old post of the bed design.

Barrett came over and helped on Sat. and Sun. trying to teach him a thing or two along the way. Sunday we planed down a huge stack of oak I recently got a really cheap deal on craigslist. Of the 20 3"thick 10" wide 8' long boards four of them were white oak(which I plan on using for some outdoor patio furniture this fall) I had a few that were birch, and a bunch that were red oak. So after getting them planed down the next task will be cutting them into the slats that make up the base of the bed.


I'm quite proud of my ingenious little method to hold the frame together, just a simple 1/2" bolt in the corners. It worked really well and is incredibally strong.

Quick Bed Update

I changed the design of the bed a little. The nightstands are a little different and the headboard is a little shorter. What do you think?

Just a few picks to show you I'm working on it. Maybe after the next few days I'll be able to show something a bit more. Walnut is super cool.........its like working with Chocolate, well maybe I've just been eating too much Christopher Elbow chocolates and I wish I was that good.

Sawdust

I've started the bed process. The design hasn't changed much I've changed a few little things here and there to make the construction more durable. I thought I would let you guys follow the process on the bed. First I took the rough stack of walnut I had and started planeing it down so that I could select the best stock for the bed. Seperating the good from the bad, and trying to pick pieces that look good together.

Next I jointed two edges to make the stock square and flat. Then it was back to the planer to thickness the lumber down to a uniform 3/4". So I'm now at the point where if I went out and bought the lumber from a hardwood lumber store like Schutte. So I spent about 15 hours processing the rough lumber down to smooth usable lumber. Its not glamourous work, and it doesn't make it feel like you achieved very much.

In that 15 hrs I produced 6 42 gal trash bags full of sawdust. I would typically use the sawdust as mulch but Walnut wood has something in it that makes it bad for plants.

I looked through a few of the comments from previous post. To answer a few of your questions Craig, whenever you want a dresser like Eric's let me know. I guess as a general note, If you see anything on the blog that I make and you like it, please let me know I would love to do some commissioned work for you. I think of myself as being reasonably priced, but I'm not Ikea. I will get finished pics of the record storage as soon as the client lets me know its ready. I'm as curious as you guys are.

Jessica and I have commissioned Cassie Lane to do a custom piece of art for our house. I found her through Etsy , believe it or not you can search for local artist. She has a blog and an etsy store. If you like her work and end up buying something please tell her I sent you, she might be a little more generous when she prices our custom piece.

It looks like our house is going to be a part of the KCModern home tour 2008. It looks like its going to be the first weekend in June, but nothing is set in stone yet. This is probably good news for blog readers because its going to force me to get a lot done between now and then. Nothing like a deadline to get an architect working.

Our Platform Bed Design

Ok here are some preliminary images of the bed. I havn't really resolved the built in nightstands but everything else is very close to what the final bed will look like. Let me know what you guys think.