| Blog series by Chris Davis | updated 120 days ago | 6 parts | 1883 reads | 6 comments total |
Part 1: The Plan
This project is something a little different. It is a bedroom wall unit, not a murphy wall bed, but one with piers, headboard, mirrors and a light bar. The kind where the bed just sits in front of it. The twist on this one is I will be adding a canopy to it. This will be a canopy like the old waterbed style, with the mirrors in the top. I’ve built both the Accent style wall unit and the canopy in the past, but have never combined the two. I’ll start with a style that I built before an...
Part 2: The Piers
I have the piers or the side bookcases built. These are bookcases like I normally build for my murphy beds with a twist and I mean a literal twist. The top sections are twisted inward toward the bed. To do this I back set the top section on the inside of each bookcase. When doing something like this you need to get you angle first, so I always start with the angled shelf first. Once you get that angle, the off-fall can be used to set up the angle on the table saw and be used to cut th...
Part 3: The Headboard Wall Unit
The wall is up! I have the piers, headboard, and light bar built and temporally set up in the shop. The headboard I spent a lot of time on. It has a cut out top that slops inward and a storage section in the lower section in the headboard (see pictures below). I’m going to do something really cool with that storage section so keep watching this blog. The light bar was straight forward, but I had to figure out how I wanted the canopy to attach later and where the mirrors would actua...
Part 4: Add The Canopy
As I said in an earlier post, this is uncharted territory. I’ve built a wall unit and I’ve built a canopy, but never combined them both. I wanted to design this canopy so that I didn’t have to rely on fasteners to keep things from falling. I wanted each board to rest on another. The sides of the canopy rest on the headboard and the post. The footboard rest on the post. Each of them have a ¾” offset on the inside for the mirror grid to rest on. The mirrors will also rest on that same ...
Part 5: The Finish
The finish was sprayed yesterday. It was a combination of a dye stain, wiping stain, and a protective coat. The dye stain was srayed on only. Since it was thinned with about 50 parts to one thinner, it dried in about 10 seconds. That gave me the very dark tone I was after. Some production lines use this process only for their color, but I feel it doesn’t give the piece enough depth. I still use a wiping stain, in this case Dark Walnut, to “pop” the grain. The finish...
Part 6: Final Assembly
It is dyed, stained and sprayed. Now for the final assembly. There is a lot more on this project, as in final assembly, then on most of my projects. I had to add the lights in the piers, headboard and header. I usually use curio lights behind the shelves, but I wanted to try some long florescent lights this time. I am still waiting for the glass for the top and the smoked glass doors. They should be ready today and I can post the finish project. Here are a couple pictures: Fo...
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