What prompted me to join VHS is access to your wood shop. I would like more storage space in my small apartment and I have this stupid bed with a mattress and a box spring that pigs up a HUGE amount of floor space and has a stupidly low clearance beneath making it of very limited utility for storage.
A platform bed that is elevated off the floor is the obvious solution, but all of those I have ever seen for sale are (a) children’s beds that are no larger than twin size (I have a full size mattress and do not want to downsize), and (b) way higher than I want or need. I want 3 feet or so of usable clearance under the bed, not the 4 or 5 feet that most kiddie platform beds have.
The main change I will have to make is the legs. I would replace the short 2x6 legs with longer ones made from 4x4’s. Am open to (and am seeking) suggestions for how best to attach these legs to the rest of the frame.
Great project for the woodshop. Be sure to jump into #woodworking on slack if you have any questions. Everything you’d need to make this would be available in the woodshop. Ana White does have some cool projects and i’m glad to see one of her projects get hacked and modified.
I have to remember to take a picture of my bed when I get home. A friend of mine, made it for me (as a paid gig) many years ago. He was broke in the moment and I had always admired his bed design. So it was win win. His bed design… maybe 25 years ago he fell and broke his back and as he spent a lot of time laying in bed healing he imagined it up. (He’s an accomplished woodworker). It’s a neat design, maybe it will inspire. It’s also designed to be fairly…. you can break it apart and move it without too much trouble. The height can be chosen on build. Anyways, lots of words, pictures would be awesome, but I’m not there now, and I figure I’ll post so I remember to add pictures later!
And yeah, I totally agree with you, it should be standard to have substantial under the bed storage.
Careful if you have a cat though. My cat claimed under the bed, and fair, so I’m not using it for storage, which will make picture easier. It’s one of her lairs. But… still, not just useful but critical! =)
Here’s the biggest revision I am considering to the original plans. The Ana White design has the long frame sides butted up against the shorter ones, thusly:
The short frame ends would be attached to the legs permanently with pocket screws and glue. The long ends would be attached using what are called furniture bolts or connector bolts and barrel nuts, dowel nuts, or cross dowels (there is a variety of names for both). These things:
Why? First, going by the engineering decisions in Ana’s plans, the short member would be attached using 2½" screws in 1½" pocket holes (I would probably also use glue on the face of the short member resting against the leg). The screws would protrude about 1" into the 4✕4 legs, which are actually 3½✕3½. This yields the other 2½" to be free to be drilled to accept the bolts running the other direction (I could, and probably should, use 3" screws, which would still leave 2" free). So it seems at first glance to be workable; at least, it is not impossible per the rules of Euclidian geometry.
By using bolts and nuts to secure the long-side members, I would make it easy to disassemble the frame into smaller pieces when moving time comes. Unlike with disassembling wood screws, I could disassemble and reassemble the thing multiple times without adversely impacting strength.
I would probably go with 2✕8’s for the long-side members, both for some additional rigidity (most of the weight of the mattress and me lying upon it would be transmitted to these members via the slats supporting the mattress) and to enable me to drill the lower bolt holes well away from any other holes drilled into the legs.
Anyone see anything obviously wrong with these revisions? I’m a big fan of finding problems with plans before I try and put them into physical reality.
This might be too late and you should def do what works for you, but the bed i have a great, strong design. I could get more pictures if you had compelling interest, it would just require much more effort, so this is a taste that should give you an idea of interest.
Let’s see if the pictures made it. Yes, my floor is a bit messy. The second picture is just to give a different angle and the small plastic tub is just to raise the mattress a bit.
Btw, i haven’t looked at your idea, i’m not great with woodwork, but i’ll take a read right now, it’s possible your idea is better than anything i took photos of, anyways, if I have any comments i’ll write back. It certainly looks like you have put some good thought into it!
But if it were me and i wanted some knock down furniture I would make make the joints as a locking through mortise and tenon joint. It would take a lot more work to get done and requires some more advanced carpentry skills. There would need to be some improvising on how this would get done at VHS - i do think a joint like this could be made at the shop.
In the video ultimately both sides would be wedged into place and it would be pretty secure until you knock the wedge out with a mallet.
