Floating bed

My son wanted me to make him a bed, to replace the basic metal bed frame he was using. When I was making my own bed I came across an idea of a bed and I save the concept images. He liked the idea of the floating bed concept images so that is what we decided to build with a few changes.

Mind you, there were no design plans so I had to do some measuring and design the plans myself, to do this DIY Floating Bed project.

The concept (courtesy of unknown):

I decided to make the bed frame slightly different. The differences from the concept to what I did were:

• Using a Bridle joint on the corners instead of the Dovetail joint.
• Adding a top and bottom cross member on the base.
• Adding ‘shelves’ for the box spring to sit on.
• Doing a different type of headboard. instead of one with shelves I my son liked the idea of a live wood slab.

Below, pictured, showing the (1) notched part of the leg base where the rail sits and (2) the Bridle joint for the corners of the rails.

Because the steps into the basement have a low head clearance, I decided to do the cutting and construction in the driveway, and the staining and clearcoat in the enclosed patio.

For the headboard, my son liked the idea of doing a live wood slab. We went to our local sawmill/kiln dried lumber company. They have quite the selection to choose from and we decided to go with a 2 inch thick Ash wood slab.

I used an ultra flat polyurethane finish on the bark, to give the bark a near natural look (not glossy). The rest of the headboard and bed frame we went with a semi-gloss polyurethane finish.

Because the live wood slab headboard does not have straight edge at the bottom, or the top, I needed to use a straight edge ruler and a L-square ruler to ensure to make sure the headboard legs were square to each other. The height of the headboard was a bit of an educated guess.

The final result turned out well, in my opinion! We added some Multi-Color – Color Changing LED Lights.
Note: The final pics of the finished bed, below, are without the low profile (2 inch) box spring we purchased, so while these pics show a bit of a gap between the mattress and the bottom of the headboard the final gap was about 2 inches.