Tuesday, May 15, 2012

More Furniture...

Caren's mom and dad are coming to visit in a week or two. Mine are coming sometime in June. We needed some furniture... beds in particular... for the guest bedroom. We can get away with putting teenage and twenty something boys on blow-up beds, but somehow I don't think that moms and dads would appreciate air beds in quite the same way.

So, after scouring the internet for ideas, we set about making some furniture...


Home Depot supplied us with inexpensive lumber... 2 x 4s, 2 x 8s, 1 x 2s, 1 x 3s and a sheet of plywood. An hour or two of cutting and we were ready to sand and assemble. Sanding is very time consuming. When one purchases inexpensive dimensional lumber, one must sand a lot. Caren and I sanded for the better part of four hours.




The headboards and matching footboards went together quickly and easily.




We thought we'd try to match the finish on the interior doors; a combination of dark walnut and mahogany Watco oil. Caren spent several more hours applying the finish.


After a weekends worth of work, we had two beds. Neither Caren nor I were entirely satisfied with the finish.


Not the best of pics, but after another day of finishing, we were much happier with the new look. Caren still has stained cuticles, but she isn't as grumpy as she was when she was halfway through the second finishing.


We figured we needed a night stand to match, so I used scrap from the bed construction, as well as a few other odds and ends that were lying around, to create this matching piece. I'm kinda proud of it because it was entirely created from scrap, and, if you don't count the hardware, didn't cost a dime.


After an unsuccessful and frustrating shopping trip to Ikea, Walmart and Target, Amazon.com provided us with vintage quilts and matching bedding.


Caren did find the candle holder at Ikea, but the real story behind this pic involves a promise. Caren was so fed up with staining that I promised that I would stain the nightstand. I wasn't quick enough in honoring that promise, so Caren set about staining this piece too... and she was grumpy.



Grumpiness and shopping frustration aside, everything came together nicely. Hope the moms and dads like the results, even if they have to sleep in separate beds. We considered a full or a queen, but decided on twins because teenage and twenty something boys refuse to share a bed... even if it is a queen.  That, and the bedroom is pretty small.

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