With another child on the way, my grand-daughter Olivia will need to give up her old crib / bed for the new child in a few months. So it is time to make her a bed that will last for a few generations.
Kelly and David wanted one with storage underneath. We sent photos of various options back and forth. The lofted ones were discarded. The one closest to what they wanted had an arched headboard and low footboard. They did not want a very tall headboard, so that it could be placed in front of the window. I did some more digging and ran across an article on Fine Woodworking for a storage under a bed. David and Kelly did not care for that bed design but liked the storage. So now it was time to rough out the design in Sketchup.
Each side would have 2 drawers and a cubby at the headboard end. This allows for placing nightstands alongside without obstructing the storage. The drawers will run on undermount drawer slides. The flat panels in the head and footboards are not terribly large and as luck would have it, I can use a beautiful piece of quarter sawn oak plywood left over from the last Dresser Project end panels for the forward facing sides!
The drawer faces will be inset slightly from the dividers. As I modeled overlay drawers, they just did not look right next to the cubby. We can play with the amount of inset, 3/4″ is shown in the rendered image.
I often have some extra days off around the Christmas and New Year and there is generally a furniture project that takes up much of that time . This year it is Olivia’s bed.
Now it was time to run to the local lumber mill – Kettle Moraine Hardwoods for the solid stock. I found some beautiful 8/4 Red Oak for the posts and arches and 6/4 for the horizontal rails. There was a good selection of 4/4 #1 Common that really would have been Select if it was longer. I came back with easily twice what I needed for the project (always build back stock). A few days later, David and I made a trip to Menards for the rest of the plywood. I did not need any “fancy plywood” as most of it will be hidden, so I could not justify a trip up to Alpine Plywood (which is where the quarter sawn oak plywood came from).