DIY Farmhouse bed

So one of the items that we purposely left behind when we moved to the PNW was our guest bed. It was an old full sized mattress that Max had used since his teenage years. We didn't think it was worth the cost to ship it out here and planned on upgrading to a queen. 

Buying the mattress was the easy part. We love our current mattress in our master bedroom so we bought a queen size from the same brand. The hard part was the search for the frame. I wanted something nice since it was a new mattress and I'm hoping we will have a lot of guests come and visit us (hint hint friends and family). 

I also wanted something potentially with storage. When we were travelling we stayed in air bnb that had drawers on the bottom of the bed. I really loved this concept but I didn't like the fact that I banged my foot on the drawer handles every time I got out of bed. We also debated buying a trundle bed in order to sleep more people in our house. 

Well. If you don't already know this let me just inform you that beds are expensive. Or maybe I'm just cheap. Maybe both. Anyway I looked and looked and looked and everything I found that was in my price range was made out of cheap particle board and the reviews were terrible. If I'm going to spend a lot of money on something I want it to be good quality and built to last. 

Much to my husbands dismay I started to research how to build a bed and I found plans for a cute farm house bed. Based on the plans I found that we had all the required tools all we would have to do is get the wood and devote the time. 

Here are the plans- we used the Queen sized ones but they have also modified the plans to King, full and twin. 

https://www.ana-white.com/woodworking-projects/farmhouse-bed-queen-sized

Materials List: 

I'm not going to list out all the wood necessary- you can read that on the plan. In total we spend roughly $250 on wood and it would probably be a little cheaper now that lumber prices are starting to come down after the covid spike. 

Tools: Miter Saw, Nail Gun (nails), Wood glue, Drill (Screws), Tape Measure, Sander (Sand paper). Paint or stain of your choice

 

We bought all the wood from our local hardware store. Plan on spending sometime selecting the straightest boards possible- this will save you time and frustration later. One thing I really liked about this plan was that it only required 8ft boards. This makes it easy when you have transportation limitations (we didn't have our highlander at this point)

Step 1: Make cuts for the head board and foot board 

There are a lot of cuts up front. Max measured and made the cuts. I sanded everything with 80 and 120 grit paper. Because this is a bed I wanted everything to be very smooth to the touch so I took the extra time to really sand each piece. 

Step 2: Construct the head and foot boards 

We laid out each board and determined the best side to be displayed on the front. We applied glue in between each piece before nailing the front piece on 

Here is the footboard put together 

Step 3: Attach the head and foot boards to the 4X4 posts and add the decorative boards on top

Step 4: Cut all the inside boards. 

I don't have any pictures of this because Max cut these while I was at work one day. Clearly it was easy enough that he could do it himself

Step 5: Wood fill, final sanding and staining/painting. 

My biggest pet peeve when looking at other people's pictures is when they don't wood fill- we don't want to see your ugly screws 

I went back and forth on the decision to stain or paint for a LONG time. I literally asked all of my co-workers and a lot of my friends and family for their opinion. Ultimately I decide to paint it white because I figured I could repaint it a different color if I ever wanted to and it would be easy to do touch ups if it get scuffed up or something. 

I painted the bed with Linen white chalk paint 

Pro Tip- the head and foot board stand up on their own (barring a strong gust of wind). Once I figured this out painting went a lot faster. I applied two coats of white paint.

Step 6: Construct 

It is in your best interest to construct the bed in the room that it is going in. One of the cons of a solid wood bed is that it is heavy AF. Another aspect of this plan that I really liked is the stability in the middle. A lot of beds that I saw online only had one flimsy piece of wood holding up the mattress. This bed has 30 pieces of 2x4s holding up the mattress. I'm fairly confident multiple people could jump on this bed and it wouldn't budge and inch. 

Step 7: Put your mattress on and you are done!

Right after I took this picture I realized that I didn't have any queen sheets-Oops! Thankfully we had some time before our family was coming to visit. 

We purposely built the bed to have a larger clearance from the floor than in the original plans. This was we can choose to build drawers or a trundle bed insert at a later date. Right now its a big space underneath. I'm totally going to utilize it if we ever play hide and seek or sardines! 

Overall we really love the outcome of the bed! It was not difficult to construct with relatively limited construction knowledge and basic tools. We constructed it over the course of a week. We spent about 4 hours cutting and constructing the head and foot board together and then throughout the week sanding and painting after work. It took us about an hour to construct the next weekend when we were both off. It could probably be done over the course of a weekend if planned appropriately for paint/stain drying. 

We would definitely recommend this as a first time project. It is very beginner friendly!! It easily saved us hundreds, if not a thousand dollars had we commissioned a solid wood bed.