Making my own bed!

I had some leftover 2x4's from my floating-bed-test so I decided to make myself a new bed. The 2x4's were already bolted together so the frame would be 4x4 and I wanted that kind of massiveness and robustness. I was thinking earlier about buying massive bed made from oak but it's price was about 1500e so I decided to try make something with same kind of feel.

The frame would be 160x200 and I bought the slatted bed base for 30e. There was no sense to do it myself.

I thought about the joints for a long time. They would need to be hidden from outside. In the inside and bottom they could be seen, but not from outside and top. I have no experience and tools to make advanced wood joints so I first used table saw to make cuts where I could put metal sheet inside the frame. There are two cuts for each joint. My table saws blade was a little bit too small for this, the cut was only 3" deep. I would have liked it to go a little deeper but it seems it was enough.

The frame with diagonally cut joints.

The metal plates and bolts I had to make. The bolts were cut from 10mm full metal steel bar. The holes in metal sheet were not 10mm, those pre-cut holes were for nails, too small.

Metal plates are locked with bolts. This is upside down so bolts will be in the bottom and bed's feet will cover them. The sides I planed to 45 degree angle.

Drilling the holes. Because I and my tools are no accurate enough to make precision holes and joints, each hole, plate and bolt is individual and had to be created in place where it was going to be used.

All mitre joints now in place.

Bed this wide has to have some support in the middle. I just used 2x2. If it's not enough, I'll put some more.

The support for slatted bed base. After doing the joints. this was easy.

Then to covering the frame. The reason for doing mitre joints was that it's easier to do the covering in the corner's. For padding I used 10mm foam rubber.

The bolts had to be temporarily locked with jesus-tape ( duct tape is known in Finland as jesus-tape because it saves ).

For final covering I used fake leather. This was really nerve-wracking because this was the moment I would finally know if this works or not at all. It worked!

The whole frame covered in leather.

This is the reason I made mitre joints. It's so much easier to do the corners when you can hide the folds. I also painted the staples black with a marker pen so they would never shine from inside of the joint. I had the make the joints in that way that I would be able to disassemble the bed without having to open the leather covering.

The bed in place. I ordered bed legs from oak, but have to wait a couple of weeks before they arrive. This had to be assembled inside the room because it would not fit door&hallway. After I've assembled this, I realized later that I didn't even test it. I felt so confident about its quality :)