Website: 1800bunkbed.com/916

Location: Folsom, CA

Amateur or Pro: Pro

Wood Species: Douglas Fir

Project Description:
I know its pretty basic stuff here but everything is custom made!! I hand select every board I use. Next I run everything through my planer and then use my router to round off the edges. Sanding comes after to clean up any rough spots. After all the lumber is cut, I stain it to the customers’ color choice if necessary, first applying a pre-stain conditioner. When that is done I place all the boards in one of two jigs I pre-made to construct the ends of the bunk beds. I then pre-drill and counter sink the screws to hold it all together. Every bed I’ve made has been different in some way. Different heights, lengths, color…you name it. The stairs I make are from 3/4″ cabinet grade plywood with 2×6 cross braces holding them together. I even make them with pull out drawers built in! I also make a pair or drawers rolling on 4 each individual casters. The drawers have a 2×10 doug fir front, sides and a back from 1/2″ MDF and the bottom from either 1/4″ Luann or 1/2″ OSB. I use 2 1/2″ wood screws, 3″ lag screws, 2×6 joist hangers and of course, wood glue to fasten everything.

This project holds special meaning for me as it is a wedding present for my oldest child; my daughter, Chelsea. I made a cradle for her when she was born and as she transitions into to this new time in her life, I thought a bed was a fitting gift. I built what is commonly referred to as a pencil post bed. It gets its name from the tapered octagons on the posts. This one is a copy of a period piece from the 19th century. The tiger maple I used comes from Good Hope Hardwoods in East Pennsylvania and is a traditional choice for this type project.

The construction was a classic hybrid “power/hand” tool exercise where I used the bandsaw, the shaper, and the mortiser for the base roughing out of the project. Most of the time spent was with hand tools – planes, chisels, and card scrapers. Because Tiger Maple has such wicked grain patterns, I used both a Lie-Nielsen 4 ½ with a high angle frog (York Pitch) and a Lee Valley low angle smoother at 62 degrees (50 degree plane iron and a 12 degree bed). A well sharpened card scraper was really a life saver.

I used “Lambs Tongues” on the rectangular transitions that sit between the tapered octagon upper posts and the straight octagon lower posts. Eight lambs tongues on each post – 32 in all. These are carved with a flat chisel.

The finish started with a coat of Honey Amber Maple aniline dye. Following the instructions of Glen Huey’s “Finishes that Pop”, I kept soaking the wood with the dye until it would no longer absorb it. I waited two days for the wood to completely dry and then I used a coat of boiled linseed oil (also per instructions from Glen’s DVD). That really made the rays on the tiger maple stand out. However, I had to wait 5 days for the BLO to dry. I then coated the surface with 4 coats of gloss armor seal followed by two coats of semi-gloss armor seal. That gave me just the right amount of gloss/glow.

When all is said and done I am pleased with the piece. More important, my daughter and her fiancé are very happy with it. Sometimes I really love this hobby….

Not sure if this qualifies as a Viewer Project but I have a different twist on woodworking. Instead of going to the lumber yard, about 80% of my projects are from recycled wood. I live in Plano Texas and I drive around on country roads looking for old vacant homes that where built in the early 1900’s. Once I find one, I start knocking on doors until I find who owns the land and home and get their permission to take some wood. Most of the wood is old growth southern pine. It’s a lot of work cleaning up the boards because in the early days, they used small tacks to hang the cheesecloth wallpaper, but it adds that distressed look that looks pretty cool.

The bed and end tables where made about 10 years ago. The dresser/entertainment/bookshelf I just now completed to match the other bedroom furniture. The cool thing about this wood is the tight grain pattern and patina (because of the large amount of rosin) for pine. You just can’t find pine like this today.

Now here is the interesting thing about the piece I just completed. I designed it for the bookshelves to be on each side of the large piece, as you can see in the photo. When I put it in the room, my wife said “it looks great…but, I want the center piece angled in the corner and put the two bookshelves together”. I told her that is not the way I designed it and she said, “I know but that is the way I like it”. Now I did what any successfully married man of 23 years would do. I stood up tall, bowed out my chest, folded my arms and said, “Yes Dear!” I hope you enjoy.

Here are a few photos of a project I completed in April of 09. It is basically modified from Rockler’s Bunk Bed Plan, made from Maple with a few coats of water-based poly, for my youngest daughter. She has the smaller bedroom and uses the top bunk as a loft space for hanging out and reading (loves to read).

It is mostly to plan but I substituted hardwood dowels for the turned spindles (yankee thrift) and left out a few of the curves. I don’t own a bandsaw so curves are roughed out with a handheld jigsaw and then completed with a pattern bit and my router. The top loft got quickly loaded with her ‘stuff’ including stuffed animals. The photos show the ‘backside’ view too (which is kind of funny, at least I think so).

I have finally finished my bed project! Here’s the story. I designed this bed by jotting down some ideas and it evolved as I worked. It has taken me well longer than it should have, but it’s finally done. I used mostly cherry, some walnut for the beading, and cherry ply for the panels. Most woodworkers don’t seem to like seeing sapwood, but I actually got a compliment for “gum streak” on the footboard from a cousin that works for a cabinet company. There are a few plugs on the tops of the headboard and footboard that are cocobolo. I used oak for the rails and stained it antique cherry, because I just had some good oak the right length for the rails. I’m pretty excited and my son has been very patient. I think he’s pleased. Hopefully it’s strong enough to handle years of abuse as he and his brother get bigger.

“Here are some pictures of the cherry bunk bed that matches a dresser you previously posted. The bed posts and railing posts all came from one piece of cherry (12/4, 8″ by 12′). That piece of wood was a lot of money but I still have some left (wood not money). Anyway, thanks for looking.”

Back in 1999, my wife wanted a nice bedroom suite. I happily looked into it for her, and was shocked at the cost of a full bedroom suite. Anywhere from $3,000 to $4,500. And surely none of them were actually solid wood. I had just started my hobby of woodworking, and so I asked my wife if she was willing to have a piece made one at a time. She said she would be. I designed the first piece, the armoire, and then asked her what type of wood she wanted. She said knotty pine. Sweet, I thought, that is the cheapest wood in the world. First I made the armoire, then we moved. I then made the dresser and a few months later, I made the end tables. All of this within about 2 years. (hey, I was in the Army, and I was busy defending my country.)

Anyhow, I never made the bed because I had bought a nice and inexpensive wrought iron bed, picked up at a garage sale. Earlier this year though, I decided it was about time to finish the bedroom suite. I designed the bed to be very simple, but with the same raised panel styling I had used in the other pieces. It took me many nights and weekends, but in the end, I think it turned out pretty good. All of the lumber was purchased at Lowes or Home Depot. Each piece had three staining layers of Minwax Golden Oak. With three layers of polyurethane, semi-gloss.

Needless to say, my wife is very pleased, and I am happy to have the whole suite completed. As a side note, my wife told me a few years ago that the only reason she agreed to let me build the suite way back when was because, as she says, “I didn’t really think you could do it, so I said yes so that I didn’t hurt your feelings.” I guess it’s easy to please someone with low expectations!

“Since the birth of my daughter ten months ago, my woodworking days are few and far between. So when my wife mentioned she had bought a king sized bed from a friend of a friend I figured I might be in for a wood working task or two. Sure enough, when I went to pick up the bed, I saw that I would indeed be up for some refinishing, and even creating a new headboard inset. The headboard contained a metal lattice inset that really does not go with the decor in our master bedroom so I decided to replace it with something more to our liking. Still a newbie woodworker, I knew this task would be a bit of a challenge but one I felt I was ready for. After getting the bed into my shop (which is nothing more than my carport), I decided that I would sand off the old stain instead of using harsh chemicals. I did manage to convince the Wife that I needed a random orbit sander to complete this task, so I bought a Porter Cable :-) Honestly, getting that sander was worth the work required to refinish the bed. The bed had a coat of light colored stain or glaze.”

“It was pretty easy to sand off the old stain on the larger flat pieces but a real pain along the joints and anywhere the wood had been carved. In hindsight I should have used some type of stripper on some of the more detailed parts of the bed. I spent a lot of hours hand sanding those parts and honestly never got them quite as good as I would have liked. I worked from 80 to 120 grit sandpaper then finished with 180. Once I got the head and foot boards looking pretty good I had to figure out what to do for an inset. I had some birch veneer plywood left over from another project so decided I would use that for the inset. In order to span the width of the bed I would have to glue (3) 2-foot wide sections of plywood together plus an additional 4.5-inch section. I knew these joints would be weak so I sought Marc’s opinion on how I should join them. He recommended that I rout a slot along the plywood and use some scrap for splines to assist in alignment, giving the joints a lot more strength when glued together. Once I got the plywood glued up and staine, I got busy with the rest of the bed.”

“I’ve enjoyed woodworking for only a little over a year, so every project is a learning experience. Here are some things I learned while working on this project:

1) I really dislike pine. It’s cheap but that is the only thing good I can say about it. Even with pre-stain conditioners it takes stain unevenly and blotches no matter how careful I am. No more pine for me!

2) Do not use different types of wood on the same project unless that is your intent. The bed is pine, the inset is birch, and the finials are maple which boils down to different woods taking stain differently.

3) When refinishing it’s OK to use a stripper! I thought I would go without using any harsh chemicals so opted for sanding only. I think it tripled my time in removing the old stain and I still had some stain in the nooks and crannies I could not sand away.

4) When using certain types of Wipe-On-Poly (black and gold container) do not follow the directions on the can. It says to sand lightly with 220 grit sandpaper after your second application. I did that and ended up removing some stain off my headboard inset. I was mildly upset to see my near perfect stain job marred by following directions on the can. I really hate that!

5) In regard to 4 above I recommend using the Watco brand polyurethane. It’s a much better blend in my opinion, is thicker, easier to use, and most importantly you can sand after your second application and it won’t harm your stain job.

6) King size beds are for king sized rooms! Walking around our room now is going to take some getting used to seeing how we upgraded from a queen size bed with no head/footboard :-D We’ll also need to get rid of some of the other furniture in the room too, but that is OK because that means I will have to build a dresser to take the place of existing dressers we’ll get rid of :-)

Overall I had a lot of fun working on this project plus I got a new sander! I think my next refinishing job will be a bit easier from what I learned on this project. And thanks to Marc for his advice on how to join up plywood for the inset. It worked like a charm!”

“I recently completed this Bunk Bed for my Grandchildren. I apologize for the photographs. The shots were done in the boys’ bedroom and I couldn’t get back far enough to get complete photographs. The bed is made with solid maple for the stiles and solid cherry for the rails. The rails have birds eye maple veneer insets. The bolt hole covers are fastened to the bed with Velcro to facilitate removal. Ultimately it will separate into 2 twin beds. It is finished with a combination of Watco Cherry Oil and GF Arm-R-Seal Urethane Topcoats. I am a retired Architect. The bed was constructed at the Sawdust Shop a rent-a- shop in Sunnyvale California over a period of a year.

Here are a couple of photos of a Murphy Bed and pair of bookcases that I made for the spare bedroom/office in my home. I got the project plans from Workbench magazine and modified it to fit my space. The Murphy Bed mechanism came from Rockler. I made the sides of the bed and bookcases from Birch plywood. White Birch hardwood was used for the face frames. I used Minwax tung oil and wipe on poly to finish the project. The center section was painted to match the walls. I don’t have a mattress yet so that’s why I’m using my air compressor as a counter weight.

This is the fifth woodworking project that I’ve undertaken and by far it’s the largest. It’s not perfect but it’s functional. I’ve learned a lot from building it and I hope to avoid my mistakes on future projects. Thanks for the web site and keep up the good work.