DANG! I can not believe this.

Jeff Horton

Member
Messages
4,272
Location
The Heart of Dixie
Got the bed finished and moved it in place. Had a little final fitting of the slats and center support. Got my wife to help me go ahead and put the mattress in place for a quick test fit. Houston we have a problem! :(

It seems we misjudged just how much extra space we needed around the mattress for the sheets and comforters. In other words the dang bed is just too big! While shortening the rails is simple and not a big surprise. The headboard and foot board is to stinking wide too. That is not going to be so easy to fix but it can be fixed.

Yes, I am pretty darn disgusted about now. What aggravates me most is the bed is the exact size we decided on. :(
 
jeff, instead of changing the outside dimentions thicken all the framing members to the inside.......box the side rails and add fill to the head-n-footboards......it`ll strengthen the whole assembly and not distract from the look you achieved......tod
 
Thank Tod, but you don't understand. We REALLY missed it! :rolleyes:

I made the rails a long because they were easy to shorten. I expected that. We were not sure how much space to leave for stuffing the comforter between the head and foot boards. Thats the easy part, cut them off and chop two mortises for the hardware.

The real problem is the width. I have no idea where we came up with what we did for the width but there is 3" between the mattress and the rails on each side!! :huh: :doh: It has to be cut down, no way around it. I hope I can salvage the posts and not have to make new ones. But I am not holding my breath.

I have the day off (read no paying jobs) so I am going to shop and see what I can do.
 
Jeff, far be it from me to presume that I can speak for Tod but I believe he's referring to making something similiar to a box beam for rails instead of just a single thickness member the rail.

You take your rail and add a top, bottom and another side to it to make a box or a square tube, thus making it thicker, adding 3" to each side.

I'm sure that you will get a better explanation but I wanted to try to explain quickly before you do anything drastic.

Maybe someone can do a quick drawing to explain better.
 
Actually, I believe that you want a full inch on either side of a mattress for bedding. So really, you have 2" on each side to fill in. And Mark + Tod's idea sounds plausible.
 
This is not a mistake -- it is a design opportunity! I'm with Tod. How 'bout a stepped rail? What is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure?
 
I should have taken photos of this so you could see how bad it looked. But I was way to disgusted. Trust me it was bad! I just came up from the Lab to run to the Borg. I have the footboard almost ready to glue back up. I used my circular saw to cut down the headboard to size. Then I ran the posts through the bandsaw and I was able to cut off the remaining piece of headboard. Some scraping the glue off. Then hand planed it down flat again and some sanding these two are ready to install.

For the new guys here is the the thread on the bed so you can see what I had.

attachment.php


Going to glue this up and see if I can't get the head board done. Once that is dry enough I can glue it up too. I don't have enough bar clamps long enough to do both at once.
 
How to fix your mistake

I figure someone can learn something from my mistakes I can be a big boy and show them. :) Fixing this was not as bad as I thought it would be. I started by doing a lot of measuring and then remeasuring to make sure this was what I wanted! Once I had everything figured out and marked I cut the posts off the doors using my poor mans guided saw.

100_6739.JPG

Next step was to take the post of the bandsaw and cut off the part of the door that was glued on. This went better than I expected. I never thought I could save the posts but I was impressed with what I did with the bandsaw. I am sure others could do even better.

100_6742.JPG

Next was to the clamp the now circumcised post to the bench and do some scraping, some planning and some sanding. 10 minutes and it's ready to go back in the game.

100_6740.JPG

After some more measuring, drilling, cutting dowels to length, more drilling gluing and clamping it all back together read for touch up paint and to be installed.

100_6741.JPG

All thats left is to shorten the rails that its pretty simple and straight forward. Hopefully Saturday it will go back into the bedroom but this time to stay!
 
Top