Bed Hacking

In amongst all of our recent sink installing, window moving, footing watching and TV cabinet transforming, we've tried to keep things interesting by tackling a few of the other smaller jobs that have been hanging over our heads.

One of those jobs is our master bed.

We got it for free from a friend of Tom's that was moving interstate, and have made do with it since we moved in.

It has two relatively major problems:

1) It is a queen size bed, but we have a king mattress. So to make it work, we've had our king mattress perched on top of the queen mattress, leaving some of the king mattress hanging over each side, which definitely speeds up the process of sliding out of bed in the morning!

2) The other problem is that because there is a window seat built in underneath that window, it hasn't been possible to push the bed all the way into that space, so it has left an empty space behind the head of the bed that usually fills up with cushions and dust.

Here's a view of that window seat without the bed in the way, while we were in the process of painting.

Because most king size bed frames are a bit too wide for that window space (even though the king mattress itself fits in there nicely), we decided to work with the queen frame rather than simply buying something new. So we dismantled the bed, and took the various pieces down to the shed for some further dismantling.

I have never been much of a fan of the fence-paling style bed head and end, so we decided to simplify things a bit. Tom brought out the trusty circular saw...

And pulled apart the essential pieces.

And then put them back together again. But this time with slightly longer legs, so that the mattress will sit higher than the existing window seat.

In the meantime, I scavenged around for some pieces of scrap timber that we could use to attach to the sides of the bed, to extend its overall width (and give the mattress a bit more support so it stops drooping on the edges).

Of course all of this happened during one of the biggest downpours Brisbane has seen for a while, so whenever we needed to pop into the house to take measurements or collect a tool we'd left inside, we'd get drenched.

We forged on, though. Tom attached the timber I'd found to the outside edge of each of the bed sides, and then screwed a VJ board on top of that, creating a wider, flat surface.

We also had to bump up the height of the inside of each side piece so that the bed slats would sit at the same level as the side piece and our VJ board extension. Does that make any sense at all? Here's an example.

The VJ is on the left, the thin white piece is the original side of the bed, and then come the slats, with an extra pine piece underneath them. Previously, the mattress would have finished with the end of the slats. Now it has a level surface to rest on all the way to the edge of the VJ. Don't worry about the black board in this picture. It was just there temporarily to act as a stable platform for us to stand on while we worked on another project.

Here's another example of our width extender on the other side of the bed. It's turned out to be the perfect width for the king size mattress!

Unfortunately my photo-taking of this whole process was not particularly great. In fact I entirely missed getting any photos of what we did with the window seat. We decided to remove the window seat lid and cut two bed-leg-sized holes in it. So now the legs slot into the window seat nicely, meaning it now squishes into the window nook properly, totally eliminating the gap. Now I have to find a new home for my cushions!

The alterations have definitely left the bed looking a little less finished (i.e. painted), so it will probably need some more attention from me in the future if I want it to look less home-made.

But then again, I do plan to bring in a nice little bed skirt to cover it up from mattress down (perhaps when I finally unpack those horrible boxes that are shielding the base of the bed from sight right now!), so maybe there isn't any point painting the bed if it's all going to be hidden anyway.

 

While I'm really enjoying knowing that I'm less likely to accidentally slide off the side of the bed in the middle of the night, the really dramatic (and slightly surprising) change is how much more spacious the entire room now feels! The space at the end of the bed has obviously increased by the depth of the window seat, which is probably only about 400mm, but it feels like we've gained so much more!