Maple Bedroom Set

Our son Ian moved out in April, leaving an empty bedroom that my wife Julie and I are going to turn into a guest bedroom.  Since it will be occupied by family and/or close friends, we want it to be nice.  The first major project for my born-again workshop, then, is to make a bedroom set.

The inspiration for this set comes from WOOD Magazine — specifically, the bed described in WOOD issue 218 and the matching night stand in issue 219:

It’s a pretty bed, but not quite what I wanted for the room.  I wanted a less heavy look, and I happened upon a dresser in an issue of Woodsmith that had contrasting light and dark components.  We also thought the headboard comes up too high in WOOD’s version.

After finding out that my old favorite wood supplier had moved to Baltimore, I looked for local sources for a nice, light-colored wood that would be affordable and reasonable to work with.  Turns out that there really isn’t anyone near Laurel, MD to buy from other than home centers; I talked to places way down in La Plata before discovering my new best friends, Woodcraft of Rockville, MD.   There I picked up 130 board-feet of soft maple and a sheet of 1/4-inch maple plywood.

The actual construction of the bed pre-dates this blog, so I’ll cut to the chase and show you the finished product:

As you can see, I only took a couple of liberties with WOOD’s plan.  I reduced the height of the headboard by nine inches to make it less imposing-looking, and I only stained the plywood panels (two coats of General Finishes Antique Cherry).

The rails connect to the headboard and footboard using knock-down bed rail fasteners, just as in the WOOD plan.  I cut slats from generic 1×4 “white wood” I picked up at the home center because making bed slats from that beautiful maple seemed a horrid waste.

The sheen comes from 3-4 coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal, semi-gloss.

Clearly this bed is not 130 board-feet of lumber.  The rest is going into other components of the bedroom set:

1. A matching night stand, pictured below.
2. A laptop desk.  WOOD didn’t do a desk — their set includes a dresser, a lingerie chest, and a blanket chest — but our friends and relatives are all geeky types who travel with laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc.  The desk is vital.  So I designed one that will coordinate nicely with the bed and night stand.
3. A closet system inspired by the one in Woodsmith issue 202 (August 2012), but styled to match the rest of the furniture in the room.  The room is a little too small to support a queen-sized bed, dresser, and laptop desk, so I’m doing the closet system instead of a conventional dresser.

Here is the rest of the set.  Each piece has its own post(s) on the blog detailing how it was designed and made.

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The laptop desk is similar, using a stained plywood panel for the field of the top and featuring an embedded electrical outlet with USB ports.  Dimensions are 29H x 40W x 23D.  There is a single wide drawer with shop-made wooden pulls in the same dark stain as the top field.  The rest is unstained maple.

 

 

 

The closet system is a built-in, but made to look as much like the freestanding pieces as possible.  The drawer case holds 4 drawers and features a dark-stained side panel on either side.  The drawers are cockbeaded to match the night stand and desk and feature shop-made pyramid pulls, like the desk and night stand drawers.

The upper section has two adjustable shelves, one above and one below the fixed shelf.  Clothes poles on the left and right should allow adequate space for hanging things, and the wall-to-wall shelf at the top provides tucked-out-of-sight storage.

Dimensions:  Drawer case is 24Wx32Hx20D; upper shelf unit is 24Wx40Hx12D; top shelf is 66Wx12-3/4D.  Construction is mostly birch plywood with soft maple trim.

 

 

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