My first diy project: Downsizing my bedframe
Hellooo. I have quoted him in some of my recent posts, Evan Monsma is a youtuber who preaches upcycling things and making stuff yourself rather than buying comercially avaliable alternatives.
This DIY mindset from Evan's videos coupled with me needing more space in my room has lead me to customise my current bedframe from a double bed to fit a single bed mattress. I chose to do this rather than build a new bedframe because I really like the shelving unit in the bedhead of my current frame.
So today I went down to my local hardware store and picked up an offcut of pine for 7 bucks and got to work.
Most people start with a plan but I never write these down. My general idea was to take off the back panel of the bedhead, put my peice of wood in the back and move the panel hook to where it needs to be for the smaller mattress size. I also planned on moving the hook on the footboard and cutting the piece to a new size however I found a spare footboard from another old bedframe we had that used the same mechanism so that was just a drop in replacement.
This first photo shows my mattress when I was in the middle of moving it out and decided it would be a good idea to document this experience. You can see that the room is fairly cramped with minimal spare space.
Next I just moved everything outside while I worked on changing the bedhead. Despite it still having all of my stuff on it the bedhead was lighter than I thought as I moved it away from the wall.
Then I got distracted a bit and frustrated for ages as i tried to pry all of the staples out of the back panel but i eventually got there. Another problem I encountered was keeping my piece of wood in place while i screwed it in from the other side, i solved this by shimming it with a combination of cardboard and lego - however i dont have a photo of it with the shims.
Next I had marked out what height i needed the hook at to match where it is meant to be, so I marked that out and drilled pilot holes. One thing I found that I didnt expect is that this bed is made of hardwood with a fake wood veneer? My drill bits struggled to get through it compared to my piece of pine.
After that it was just a mattere of screwing in the hook and reusing some of the staples that didnt break when i opened the back panel to keep it shut.
It took me longer than I expected to reattach whatever these piece are that hold up the mattress lengthways. I think it was just because I was tired.
And then I was done, I had a single bed, and an extra 30 centimeters of space. The only problem now is that I no longer can use my bed as a footrest at my desk, I might make one of those next.
You just sat and read a teenagers horrible explanation of how they downsized their bed with shitty pictures to accompany it. Thanks, I appreciate that you exist even if I don't know you do.