How to Build a Beautiful Wooden Bed for $100, Chemical Free

Yes, this is a real dilemma.

So I came up with a plan. I’ve got some luxury foam mattresses, imported from Germany. I want a nice solid wooden bed, affordable, and no chemicals on it. So now we have a real problem, no bed will fit the metric size, no bed is sturdy enough, and rarely any bed on the market is made out of solid wood! And chemical free furniture? Forget that. So DIY is the only option!

I tried king, queen, and queer size but nothing matches the European mattress size 😉 So I decided to do the unthinkable. Waste time away from my chickas and strippas and actually build a nice sexy wooden bed myself, hell yeah!

So I went to my favorite “home improvement” store and bought floor joists, aka framing lumber /  dimensional lumber. No we aren’t building a new house, just a bed…and it looks awesome–the girls love it…my back, too!

So here’s the deal, I bought 2x10s, cut them, and sand a little. Some beds I didn’t have to sand at all; the boards were clean, straight, and looked good as-is, not what you would expect from Home Depot, is it!? To be precise, only about 1 in 20 boards are clean and straight, so don’t expect magic, you’ll have to seek out the clean bits.

How to Build the Bed Frame

Here’s the finished frame.

It’s made from 2″ x 10″ x 8 ft. the dimensions here are 90cm by 200cm. The whole thing is held together by what I call “Bart Simpson ties” as you can see in each corner. Four stainless bolts to each side, certified to carry a massive load indeed.

What isn’t shown below, I used 1″ common boards on top of that, with a 1″ gap in between. The mattress hence rests on 1″ common boards, which provide some additional flex in case your mattress (or something else) is too stiff, or you need that extra ‘bounce’ at times:

 

The Bart Simpson tie shown here is only 6″ I believe so it doesn’t show and won’t hurt your mattress. I like the trapezoid kind of feet, it creates a 1969 kind of look and even if you’re not into LSD, long hair, and dancing naked in the mud, 69 by itself makes everything interesting.

 

A stud was screwed in lengthwise. This is were we place the 1″ thick common boards.

By the way, wood screws are no longer a commodity. If you want awesome screws to screw your wood like a pro, use SPAX! These screws make screwing fun and they are mad out of extremely good material.

Below we see how the Bart tie and each corner are assembled:

 

And finally tightened. We all love the look of Douglas Fir. Home Depot here in Baltimore sells these heat treated without chemicals. The edges are round and the surface rather smooth. It has a nice reddish color, not as much as red oak,  but it looks way more pleasing to the eye than pine or other white wood. In addition, it’s much harder and sturdier than pine; hence, it’s used as a floor joist in home construction.

For way less than $100 you can build your own.

Benefits

Looks awesome

Feel awesome

Your back will thank you

No chemical odors

Fits exactly your mattress size

Super sturdy: can hold more than a ton easily (in case you plan a big party)

Trade-offs

Everything in life has a disadvantage, trade-off, or cost attached to it. Louis Roederer, and Dom Perignon are going to cost you, too.
The only trade-off here is weight. This thing is heavy!
But massive, impressive structures are always meant to be heavy! Ergo….

It doesn’t cost much and it’s awesome to build this bed. High price tags do not always correlate with high quality.

You will find that’s true when you compare Veeam vs storagecraft, unitrends, acronis, etc. The real winner has a much  lower price tag!