queen size bed plan

7/28/2019 Queen Size Bed Plan

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Queen size bed plan

Bill of materials

The bill of materials below assumes all the lumber is of good quality. Youshould buy extra wood to be able to leave out pieces with defects in them, as

construction lumber is often full of knots and other defects. Generally, its best

to buy wider pieces of lumber and rip them to the right width. You end up with

higher quality lumber that way, because smaller pieces of lumber are cut from

the smallest trees and often end up warping.

Part Quantity Used for

2x8 x 8' 2 * Side rails

2x8 x 12' 1 * Bottom horizontal for headboard and footboard.

2x10 x 8' 3 * For headboard top horizontal, and footboard top horizontal

2x3 x 8' 3 * For the posts


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Cross section

Note how the slats rest on the ledge on the inside of the side rails.

A rabbet in the end of the slats ensures that they don't add too much height.


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Headboard


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The holes for the dowels are best drilled by clamping the horizontal and thepost together, and drilling the hole through both parts at once from theoutside, as shown below.


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Footboard


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The foot board is nearly the same as the head board, just shorter. If you whoprefer to stick their feet off the end of the bed, leave out the top horizontalpart, and make the posts just 18" long.

Bed rail


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The bed rail has a series of blocks on the ledge to support the slats. Thepurpose of these blocks is to hold the slats in place laterally.

Its best to glue and screw the 1.5"x1.5" support rail for the slats onto the mainpart of the rail, as all the weight is transferred through that rail.

Final assembly

The side rails are only attached on location. To move the bed frame, the side

rails are unscrewed.

The slats are placed between the bed rails, and are not fastened in place. Theblocks on the bed rails prevent them from sliding


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around.

Building a bed(from 2x4 lumber)


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I needed an extra bed in my old house for one of the tenants. Rather than buy something, Idecided to just build a bed out of construction lumber.

Building this bed turned out to be a one day project. I was also a little limited by the tools I hadaround, as I had already moved many of the tools from my old workshop. So the only powertools I used in building this bed were a table saw, a hand drill, a small power planer, and a beltsander.

I spent under $30 on materials, although I already had the screws and dowels. If I had boughteverything, it would still have been under $50.

I didn't actually use a single 2x4. Rather, I used spruce lumber normally used for framing. I usedthree 2x8's, one 2x6, one 2x10, and two 2x2's. all 8' long.


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The bed rails eachhave a 2x2(1.5"x1.5")attached to thebottom inside edge,

on which the slatssupporting themattress rest. Theimage at left is across section of thebed illustratingthis.

When usingconstructionlumber to buildfurniture, itsnecessary tocarefully select theboards to use.Fortunately,something like abed frame is heavy

enough that a lighttwist in the lumbercan be forcedstraight whenassembling it.

Althoughconstructionlumber comesplaned, it is

typically not planed to a smoothness desired for furniture projects. I had already moved my

thickness planer and jointer from my shop, so the next most convenient thing to use was a powerplaner. The power planer is about the size of a regular jack plane, but it works more like a miniupside down 3" wide jointer. The wider boards required three side by side passes to plane. Onsome of the boards, I still ended having some ridges between the passes, which I sanded with abelt sander.
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I also put a quarter inch chamfer on all the exposed edges. The power planer infeed side has a 45degree V notch init, which allowedme to get aconsistent depth of

chamfer whether Iwas putting it ontop of the factoryrounded edge, or afresh square edgefrom a rip cut. Idecided to makequarter inchchamfers part ofthe overall stylingof this project.

For chamfers inthe end grain, Ijust cut them byhand with a sharpknife.

The overall bed

design consists of aheadboard andfootboard ofsimilar design,with the side railsscrewed onto thehead and footboards. The bedposts are two 2x3'sside by side, with anotch for where the

side rails screw in.

Putting some nice curves on the headboard like I did withthis onewould have been better, but Ialready removed my bandsaw from the old shop. So I had to make do with some straight cutsinstead.
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The horizontal members of the head and foot board are joined to the posts with 5/8" dowels. Thedowel joints aredrilled and gluedthrough just one ofthe 2x3's of the

post. To drill theholes, I securelyjig up thehorizontal boardwith the piece ofthe post, and drillthrough bothpieces. That way, Ican ensure theholes line upbetween the two

parts, even if Ionly freehand drillthem with a handdrill. I'd used thatsame approachwhen buildingaworkbench

The diagram at leftshows howeverything isjigged up for thedrilling.

The widest boardthat I was using forthe head board wasactually cupped alittle bit, butjigging it up fordrilling also forcedit flat whileclamped. Afterdrilling the holes, I

just glued the dowels in place with the clamps still in, so now the dowels hold it flat.
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After gluing andhammering the

dowels in, I foundI had a slight gapbetween thehorizontal boardsof the headboardand the post.

I didn't have anyclamps longenough to span thewidth of the bed,

so clamped twopieces of wood tothe horizontalboard, and usedthose to pull thejoint together.

This does requirethat the bottom two clamps in the photo are tightened quite hard. I recommend you don't attemptto do this with anything other than all metal clamps that are tightened with a screw.

If all this seems too much trouble to you, another approach would be to use some 4" long woodscrews instead of dowels. Not quite as sturdy, but sturdy enough, and the gaps close just bytightening the screws.

After gluing thehead board andfoot boardtogether, I tookone pass over thehalf post with thepower planer toflatten the outsidesurface. I thenproceeded to glue
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the other 2x3 onto the post.

This part is a bit tricky, because with lots of glue in the joint, it will try to 'float' to the side asclamps are applied. The one clamp in the photo that is in a vertical position was to hold thatpiece aligned better.

I still ended up having the parts misaligned by about a millimeter. I just planed a millimeter ortwo off the sides of the post to smooth it out afterwards. I cut the bevels onto the post last. Forbevels on the inside side (next to the hadboard), I couldn't get the power planer into the corner,so cut those with a hand plane.

The bed side railsconsist of 2x8 x 8'

pieces of lumber,cut to 80" inlength and 7" inwidth. A 2x2(1.5"x1.5") isscrewed and gluedto the bottomedge. A smallblock is then gluedevery 6" to keep

the slats from sliding around.

Finally, the siderails are screwedinto the gaps lefton the post. I usedsix 2.5" #8 screws.In retrospect, #10screws would havebeen slightlybetter, but the #8screws was what Ihad lying around.
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And finally, thebed frame allassembled. For the

slats, I usedrecycled lumber.Ironically, theslats are salvagedfrom an old boxspring that I haddismantled atsome point.

I'm no big fan ofbox springs. Its

much better tohave the mattresselevated on slatsinstead, so thatthere is lots of

room under the bed for storing stuff.

Besides, this gives more room for the Calvin and Hobbes-esque monsters to hide under the bed.

I am rather satisfied with how little time it took to build this bed, and how solid

the whole thing ended up.
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queen size bed plan

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