After promising Miranda a new bed with a desk in it for almost a year now, construction has begun. I borrowed the truck from Dad yesterday morning and made a run to Rona to pick up the raw materials. I also borrowed Dad’s Skil saw and table saw.
Here’s what we’re heading for:
Today was all about cutting wood. Tammy was my co-pilot and we worked all day to get all the plywood cut to size, as well as the 2 x 8 lumber which makes the actual bed frame.
It doesn’t look like much, until you take into account all of the cut plywood piled in the background. Part of this exercise is not just to make Miranda an awesome bed, but also to learn some lessons in furniture construction before turning me loose on some bookcases for the living room. Lessons learned today:
- Plywood blades are for suckers. I made some seriously bad cuts and came close to ruining a sheet of plywood before I came to my senses and just put a general-purpose saw blade back on.
- For almost all cuts, a circular saw works better than a table saw. I only ended up using the table saw to rip 1 1/2 inch strips of plywood
- You can’t use a 2 inch wide piece of plywood as a cutting guide. It bends and leaves you cutting in the wrong place.
But in the end, it was all cut, and no blood lost. Now is the easy part. I just don’t have any time now and it will have to wait.
How are you? Did this go well?
Last night Tammy and I put the "bed" part together for real. In the picture above, the wood is just arranged to check the sizing. Everything fit pretty well, with the exception of the bed platform itself. That one piece was marred by the single worst saw cut in the whole operation. Even so, it fit, but it’s a good thing it will be hidden by the mattress. 🙂
The next steps are the end shelf / bed support units, but they have to wait until we have a free moment. Karate/Bujutsu tonight and the next few nights.