To sleep in a bed handcrafted by the one you love, is perhaps the stuff dreams are made of? Not in our house…
Plus we had the added bonus of it it costing very little but our time. We planned this bed together, Marc built it to my design ideas and we are extremely proud of our achievement.
The story of how our Bed came to be:
They say you should change your bed/mattress every 8 years. Ours was at least 10 years old. It was a ‘super king’ size, but in reality far too big for our room. So along with plans for redecorating our bedroom, we decided to downsize to a king size and planned on buying a temporary bed that would be moved into the spare room, giving us the time and space, to save up for a better quality bed. We later bought a new bed plus a mattress that gave us both back ache. It was a disaster! Luckily we were later gifted a superb mattress, and were able to get rid of the new awful one, you can read more about that here
The Inspiration:
Marc started with the headboard. I of course knew exactly what I wanted; a rustic log cabin style, made of reclaimed wood, with a few special details, I wanted an undulating shape similar to this from Kit Kemp, but not as tall:
The bed Head board
We started by gathering the wood and used… yep you guessed it, some new wooden palettes that were no longer needed. After many hours of sawing, joining and sanding (oh so much sanding) I began to see a headboard taking shape…
He trimmed it with a copper edge and attached it with upholstery studs. The copper strip was bought at a boot fair and the packet of upholstery studs I found in my sewing basket. The whole thing was later polished and oiled to make it look aged…clever huh?
The Bed Frame:
Next came the main body of the bed. My specifications were that it needed to be slightly higher than our old bed. Then the light could shine into the room under the bed via the large window. I also wanted it to have two rustic style bedposts.
He constructed a slatted base and devised and made an ingenious metal fixing bracket. Overall I wanted it to be kept as simple and as natural looking as possible.
The bed posts were made from a single tree branch that had been stripped of its bark and allowed to dry out. They were then topped with the wooden pineapples we had removed from our old stair bannister posts. I am planning on covering them with gold leaf very soon.
The results I think, speak for themselves…
I would love to know what you think of our latest diy project? Do let me know via the comments below.
Next time I will reveal to you the whole of our redecorated bedroom.
