Double Trouble

Sean and I love each other to pieces. So much so that we sleep in very close proximity to one another. And while we do love it, I believe we're ready to spread out a little. get some personal space. sleep in peace (without being kicked, poked, slapped or elbowed).

You see, for the past couple years, we've been sharing a double bed. A little, dinky double bed. The bed size that is just over a foot bigger than a twin.

That's freakin' small, y'all.

Here's my thinking... we're married now. we need a grown-up room. Currently our room is painted this awful mustardy-yellow color. His choice, not mine. It also has a boat theme. I incorporated reds and blacks to go along with the Grey Poupon inspired color, it has flat black furniture (I hate the flat paint), a picture of a boat, and a small sailboat hanging on one wall. I did the room up nicely, but I've dealt with it for long enough. Out with the old; in with the new!

We live in a small house so storage is key. With that in mind, one place that we saw an opportunity to create more storage is under the bed. Introducing: operation build-a-bed.

When this bed is finished, we will be sleeping almost four feet off the ground. You have to jump a little to get in this beast.

Here are some pictures of what we're workin' with...

The main structure of the bed is built from stacked 2x12x8' Spruce. It's solid and heavy and will probably sell with the house because it's so big, haha!

At this point, the bed is about 24" tall and is fastened with 5/16" carriage bolts.

Sean put the 2x4 supports on the outside of the structure to add some visual interest so it doesn't look like a big boring box. Once painted, I think it will look more cohesive. Now, it just looks like some sort of crazy stage. We built a platform and screwed the bed rails to it so the mattress wont slide off.

Above, you can see the stanchions that support the platform that the mattress will sit on, also held together with carriage bolts.

Towards the back you can see hinges. Having storage under the bed is only useful if you can actually get to your stuff, right? Well, we put hinges on the backside so when we need something, we just lift our bed and voila! Our crap is easily accessible. We're going to add some shocks as well, ones similar to what you find on a tonneau cover for a truck. Those will help with the heaviness of the platform and mattress and will hold it up while we rummage through our junk.

We have yet to go mattress shopping for a queen size mattress (a queen! yay!) so, for now we just threw the old double mattress on top. I wish I would have gotten a picture of how tall it is; I'm pretty sure I stared at it in awe of how ridiculously huge it is for about ten minutes. It's ginormous.

We still have some more work to do on our grown-up bed (paint and more hardware), but for now we're thankful to be sleeping in our bedroom again and not camping out in the living room on the floor.  I was over that the first night. Getting poked by a cold wet nose in the ear because you're finally on the dog's level is not my idea of a restful night's sleep.