Design and Planning
My wife and I will be bringing home our daughter in a few weeks. It's time to get serious about her bedroom, so this blog is a chance for me to keep track of my thoughts during the design and building of the bed, and to ask you all for your valuable input.
Wife wants a fancy bed, conceptually similar to this:
But she wants it to be a daybed. I came up with this:
Which is a terrible picture of an awful sketch I made.
It's going to be a twin, which gives mattress dimensions about 75"x39"x6".
I'll get in AutoCAD and make a better sketch, and be able to plan how to build this a bit better.
Some very helpful LJs advised me about making moldings, which already has my brain running about how to make the curved rails… Oh and of course LOML chose the curvy option for the side, instead of the easy straight option at the bottom…
The plan so far:
Posts are roughly 3Ă—3, I'm thinking. I'll probably resaw or plane down from 4Ă—4. Don't have a lathe, so there will be some hand shaping; nothing too fancy without a lathe. Probably buy ball finials for the tops.
Headboard (or do you call it a sideboard for a daybed?) panel is 1/2" plywood, I think, and sits in grooves in the posts at the ends, and sits in a groovy groove in the curvy top rail. Moldings curve across it, and "support" a circle with a fancy "M" (for Meredith) in the center.
The headboard top rail should be 3" thick, I think, or equal to the posts; cut to a fancy curve, probably or other routed profile along its length. A groove routed on its underside retains the panel. Routing this groove will be a challenge, methinks. Oh, and I think it should M&T into the posts.
Possibly could get away with 1.5" thick for the rail…
Headboard bottom rail is straight, maybe from a 2Ă—4 cut down a bit? M&T into the posts, groove along length to support the panel.
The ends:
Cut top rail to a curve, cut tenons to fit in posts, then mortise to receive slats. Mortising for all those slats will be a real challenge… maybe I could use dowels for the slats, and drill the mortises, or cut round tenons onto rectangular slats. Anything beats chopping that many mortises - especially on a curve!
So this is a big project (for me), maybe the biggest I've done, and it's for a good cause. So if anyone has advice or suggestion, please chime in - I could use it!
Stop me now before I do something dumb!
My wife and I will be bringing home our daughter in a few weeks. It's time to get serious about her bedroom, so this blog is a chance for me to keep track of my thoughts during the design and building of the bed, and to ask you all for your valuable input.
Wife wants a fancy bed, conceptually similar to this:
But she wants it to be a daybed. I came up with this:
Which is a terrible picture of an awful sketch I made.
It's going to be a twin, which gives mattress dimensions about 75"x39"x6".
I'll get in AutoCAD and make a better sketch, and be able to plan how to build this a bit better.
Some very helpful LJs advised me about making moldings, which already has my brain running about how to make the curved rails… Oh and of course LOML chose the curvy option for the side, instead of the easy straight option at the bottom…
The plan so far:
Posts are roughly 3Ă—3, I'm thinking. I'll probably resaw or plane down from 4Ă—4. Don't have a lathe, so there will be some hand shaping; nothing too fancy without a lathe. Probably buy ball finials for the tops.
Headboard (or do you call it a sideboard for a daybed?) panel is 1/2" plywood, I think, and sits in grooves in the posts at the ends, and sits in a groovy groove in the curvy top rail. Moldings curve across it, and "support" a circle with a fancy "M" (for Meredith) in the center.
The headboard top rail should be 3" thick, I think, or equal to the posts; cut to a fancy curve, probably or other routed profile along its length. A groove routed on its underside retains the panel. Routing this groove will be a challenge, methinks. Oh, and I think it should M&T into the posts.
Possibly could get away with 1.5" thick for the rail…
Headboard bottom rail is straight, maybe from a 2Ă—4 cut down a bit? M&T into the posts, groove along length to support the panel.
The ends:
Cut top rail to a curve, cut tenons to fit in posts, then mortise to receive slats. Mortising for all those slats will be a real challenge… maybe I could use dowels for the slats, and drill the mortises, or cut round tenons onto rectangular slats. Anything beats chopping that many mortises - especially on a curve!
So this is a big project (for me), maybe the biggest I've done, and it's for a good cause. So if anyone has advice or suggestion, please chime in - I could use it!
Stop me now before I do something dumb!