The Bed Frame Project
In the 2003-2004 school year, we are hosting a foreign exchange student from Georgia named Giorgi Burduli. As such, we needed to provide him a bedroom. We have a room earmarked as Katie's room, but she didn't need it, so we had it piled full of junk. So, we cleaned that out and made a bedroom.
Then we needed a bed. When we decommissioned our King sized bed and moved into our bed nook, we couldn't bring ourselves to put away the wonderful headboard and return post footboard that A) was sooo cool, and B) we paid so much for. So, it has been planned since the days of the decommissioning to turn those pieces into a daybed. Well, we have been strapped for cash and time, so that hasn't gone anywhere. Till now.
We ended up making the day bed and we are going to use that as Giorgi's bed. It's a full twin bed, so it's plenty big enough ... esp for the room he has (which isn't huge).
I was happy because I finally had a good excuse to use my metal tools. I've been collecting them for years and never really using them (for a wide variety of reasons). I've had my welder for over 8 years now and never really fired it up for a good project (mostly because it's only been plugged into power for 1 year of it's life). Anyhow, I have a ton of metal tools and my not using them has made a very unhappy Barbara. So, I was overjoyed with a good excuse to make something :).
I present you with the pictoral creation of this bed.
The raw pieces from the steel yard. You see (2) 12 foot pieces of 1 1/4 inch square steel tubing, and (2) 10 foot sections of 2 inch by 3 inch angle iron (and the headboard).
The cut to length pieces, with the angle cuts and holes drilled. These are ALMOST ready to weld up. I still had to do a little notching and grinding and stuff I won't show.
So, after cutting the 20 feet of angle iron for the outside rails, I realized how lucky I ended up being (of course having spare steel around isn't bad if I did have to go get more :) ... but it would have been annoying to not be able to complete this part on the day I was working on it).
I then did the notching and the welding. Here it is finished except needing a brushing and paintjob.
Of course, so far you think I am a master workman or something ... yeah, right ... just take a look at the super high quality of this weld and you'll understand :)
But, I did plan ahead and the weld is hidden by a very nice flat black paint job, and then is under the sheet of plywood, so you can't see it no matter buah hah hah!!!!!
After painting, I put it into the bedoom and assembled. This was when I realized it wouldn't fit on that wall, so we had to rotate the room furniture so it would fit :) ... it was tight.
Then of course is the final shot. This step doesn't show the slats and plywood for the base, but they are there, Ledford style of course :)
And you know what I said about never having done a project with my welder or metal tools ... well, this says it all.
This page was written in notepad and is kept very simple on purpose. This makes it load faster and does not tie us to the evil monopoly's non standard based web browser.
