Hatrack River Forum: My Girlfriend Amazes Me (She Built a Bed)

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Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :

My girlfriend and I just graduated from college and moved into a two bedroom apartment with my college roommate for the summer. We moved in last weekend and are still trying to unpack and settle in for the summer.

Our bed for the moment is a single futon mattress donated by my mom. We have no frame, no futon and no box spring to go with it. We're trying to conserve money so we didn't really want to go buy a bed for it. Plus there is a futon frame at home to go with it that has our name on it but that we can't afford to transport from Indiana where it is to New York where we are. We could scour Craigslist until a sufficiently cheap old bed frame comes up, or wait and see if one pops up on the Albany area Freecycle.

But instead of doing that, my girlfriend decided to build one. Her job doesn't start till next week, so she has all day to work on it. I came home from work night before last to find that she had already written up a diagram and figured out the dimensions. Together we figured out what equipment we'd need and headed over to the local hardware store. It cost about $150 all told to get the tools and lumber and such. Of that about $50 was tools that we will, hopefully, reuse.

Yesterday I came home to discover the bed was pretty much complete. She'd called her friend from the next town over and the two of them had build it during the course of the day. She'd assembled five frames that could be arranged to form the base of the bed, leaving lots of room to store stuff under the bed. She used 4"x8" to build it, with the intention that the sides of it can double as a book shelf.

After I got home we carried the pieces upstairs and assembled then, and then placed a piece of plywood over the top. The result is really cool and provides excellent storage. It's the perfect height too. We slept on it last night for the first time. The frames didn't even need to be secured together (though we intend to secure them together eventually) and it worked great! It looks amazing too. My girlfriend is amazing [Smile]

I'll try and post pictures as soon as I get some.

[ May 21, 2009, 02:57 PM: Message edited by: Alcon ]

Posted by adenam (Member # 11902) on :

That is totally amazing [Smile]

Does your girlfriend have a lot of experience with wordworking or was she just able to figure out how to do it?

Posted by Armoth (Member # 4752) on :

Cool! My brother and I did the same thing a couple of months ago. He and his wife needed a new bed - we got wood for Home Depot, and put it together!

He was going more for style than function, so it was a platform bed. Kinda low to the ground, but really sheik and cool looking. It was a lot of fun, and we felt like big men afterward. There was beer and much grunting.

Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :

quote:
Does your girlfriend have a lot of experience with wordworking or was she just able to figure out how to do it?

No experience doing it. She just grew up with a very do-it-yourself mom. She pretty much figured it all out from scratch.

Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :

Are women similarly impressed if their boyfriends build things? I must admit, I've never known a woman to do any carpentry other than making picture frames, so I'd be impressed if my wife did something like this. I'm just not sure how sexist that makes me. [Wink]

By the way, 4"x8" sounds like an improbably large cross section for lumber to be used for beds, shelving or most any furniture. And too short in both dimensions to be anything other than a cross section.

Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :

Actually it was 2x8, sorry. But yeah, 2x10 would have been better for a bookshelf (the intended use of the cross section) - but that would have been out of our price range. So we'll make do with trying to balance our books [Smile]

Posted by Valentine014 (Member # 5981) on :

quote:
Are women similarly impressed if their boyfriends build things?

Yes, we are!

Posted by Traceria (Member # 11820) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Valentine014:

quote:
Are women similarly impressed if their boyfriends build things?
Yes, we are!

I agree!

This doesn't count as carpentry in the least, but I, the female in the relationship, do very well with do-it-yourself furniture whereas my fiance is clueless. Of course, he's got other WOW qualities and can afford to be lax there. [Wink]

Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :

quote:
really sheik

Heehee.

Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :

I thought for YEARS that sheiks must have really good taste, since people used their title as a synonym for "stylish." [Wink]

Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :

Ok, good so far, but have you given the bed a really thorough field-test? You shouldn't praise its excellence before you know whether it'll collapse under vigorous activity.