My New Handmade Bed

For the past few months, my tripod bed has been supported by a stack of my heaviest and most sturdy books. Since shoving the precious volumes under my mattress, I have had an increasing longing to flip through their pages.

Over a month ago, I purchased a beautiful piece of live wood from eBay with the intention of making it into a platform bed. Since then it has been leaning against the wall gathering dust. This Sunday, I finally purchased the rest of the wood I would need, four casters and a $1 phillips head screwdriver, since my power drill refused to work.

Here's how to make a platform bed:
1 Beautiful piece of live edge wood
1 piece of 3/4in wood cut to same dimensions as live edge wood (15x79in)
3 pieces of 3/4in wood cut to 30x15in
2 2x4's cut down to 70"
6 2x4"s cut down to 43"
4 4in caster wheels
16 washers
16 L brackets
a plethora of screws

The 2 long pieces of 2x4" and 2 of the shorter are built into a rectangular grid, and of the remaining three, two are placed 4 inches to either side of the center of the long piece, and two, 8 inches from the foot and head of the bed, to support the wooden slabs placed on top. The joints are secured with an L bracket on either side. A caster is attached to each corner, wheel parallel with the shorter sides.

The four pieces of 3/4" plywood and my live edge slab are arranged as seen above and screwed into the 2x4"s. My three legged fold out couch bed is released from its remaining three legs and placed on top of the platform. Tada!

Although I sustained excessive bruising in my left hand from putting in over a hundred screws with a screwdriver, I am excessively proud of my slightly creaky platform bed on wheels! I no longer have to worry about dust under my bed because I can just move it out to sweep.... My dad said I couldn't do it, I feel justified.