Home-making

The bedstead, oiled up like a Tongan flagbearer.

 With the arrival of visiting relatives becoming imminent, and the spare room still being basically a rubbish tip, I felt that it behoved me to get my arse into gear and sort out a spare bed.

I've had an old oak bed head and foot cluttering up my garage workshop for as long as we've lived here; that's coming up on thirty years now. It's not a masterpiece of construction, but it's adequate* and it means that I only have to build the base. I'd like to be able to make the stretchers out of oak as well, but that would cost a whole dump-truck full of money, so they'll be pine. They'll hardly ever be seen, anyway.

Mmmmmmm.... oaky!

So far I've just scraped off the old flakey varnish, given them a sand down, and slapped on a coat of linseed oil.

I've made and stained the stretchers, and I'll just assemble the whole thing with steel brackets rather than engaging in any more complex joinery. I want the base to be as high off the ground as I can manage with these components, so that we can store as much crap as possible under the bed. That means that, having long legs subject to racking stresses, it will benefit from the diagonal bracing of the brackets.

I have some old bed-boards from an old bed, but not enough I think. Still, making some more bed-boards is hardly a challenging woodworking task.

* Though it's a weird width that does not match any modern mattress width. The closest we can come is with our foam-rubber foldy-sofa-mattress-transformer thing, so that will probably end up doing the job.

Bonus driveway mushroom picture, because why not?