2 Queens II

Coming into some crunch time around the promised Christmas Eve install for these queen beds, we had some bad weather and my wife's birthday is in December as well. I did what I could do when I was able to do it. It starts with building out the nightstands and trimming out the platforms.

Now you can see how this whole thing fits together with the nightstands and drawers

hard to tell, but I got the trim all done for this one too

You can see the bottom spacer 2x4 here, and the nightstand shell

Got the other headboard trimmed out top & sides

and the parts to trim out the rest of the platform

To build out the nightstands, I start with the basics. The side of the nightstand has to come up to the top of the box. The box gets a trim board on top, and that's the same thickness as the top of the nightstand. The width I used 2 1x6's side by side. I wanted to put one drawer in there with an open shelf down below, some nightstands would be all drawers. It's not huge, but you could put a lamp, a drink, and a stack of books on there. The height on the bottom shelf is set by the 2x4 on the floor, so I supported it with a couple of other 2x4's under there. I wrapped it in a 1x4 trim. For the drawer casing, I used 2x6 scraps to form the drawer case sides, it also let me nail the top and the outside together. The hard part about building drawers is getting the sides exactly parallel. Since the nightstands have to detach with just a couple of screws I had to come up with some kind of base for the drawer too. And the face frame for the drawer needs to wrap flush and still allow free movement of the drawer.

The rest of the trim is straightforward. The headboard gets 1x3 to wrap the top and sides, then the footbard gets 1x3 on the sides and a 1x6 on the top to cover that much depth. I made a 45* cut on the nightstand top and the same cut on the 1x6 footboard top to trim out the sides. The entire platform has a nice wide level surface. that turned out to be my favorite part of the whole project.

It's a pocket hole party!

Cut another drawer casing

The drawer fit under the trim

The youngest on the sander getting ready to paint

Got both kids out to help

To make whitewash, you mix up 1 part of primer and about 3 parts water. The mix is different every time you add primer or water, so be sure to make up enough to cover the entire project. I had to cut all of the drawer faces for this one, which meant finishing the second drawer casing first. Then I cut the drawer faces so I could whitewash them along with the rest of the bed. Then I put on 2 coats of Old Masters - Masters Armor protective finish to seal up. That stuff really dries fast and hard, I really like it.

The other bed got painted white, so it didn't need the drawer cases finished first. However the trim was all edged with an Ogee bit, so I had to cut the tops for the nightstands and route those edges so the curve would be consistent. Having my 12 year old daughter holding a board in place so I could route a curve (she was in no danger - it was totally safe) has got to make this the strangest Christmas Eve ever.

After the paint dried, Ella and I went to install

The white bed - note where the nightstand should be

Detail on that ogee edge routed into the platform

This is already a really cool bed

The whitewashed bed turned out fantastic too

Client picked up the drawer pulls

This turned out great, but took way too long to install on Christmas Eve. Now I have to build the other 2 nightstands, the other 2 drawer casings, and 26 more drawers all without the original beds to size anything. this is going to be fun?