Me around the time I built the first one.

My first one was sourced from the forest with wood still green on first use. I constructed it entirely of fresh hewn logs, barked with a machete. With a top and a bottom platform it was perfect for the setting and it didn’t fall apart. I built it in my fathers little cabin in the woods so that I’d have a genuine bed. It was a bunk house bunk bed made from scratch. The wood was shaped to accept somewhat interlocking pieces and held together by stout lag bolts and looked oh so manly for my caveman self.

The Bunk House

My next home built bed was tiny, for a crib mattress. The one after that was small. Then there was another, and another. Actually, there were several more, all borne of necessity . Finally, I’m cured – I think.

A photo came to my phone from the great state of Texas where I see another generation carrying the torch. We make beds from scratch.

What I have done: solve a problem within budget. What I have not done: create an heirloom that will be passed down through the generations. Memories, yes. Not keepers. Most were just too customized for use anywhere else.

One of the beds was never meant for actual human use, though I would bet that at least one infant has been in it. My daughter was the beneficiary of a rocking cradle that I cut out of plywood on the band saw. I assembled all the pieces at home, painted it white, and then painted a little colorful design at the head. I think it’s still in her house, still available for use by the children for their dolls.

When money is tight, it can be a temptation to make your children’s bed for them. I don’t mean put on the sheets and blankets anew, I mean build the thing.

The temptation came to me when one of the children migrated from the crib. I built a very simple bed that fit the crib mattress and painted it chocolate brown, probably because there was paint in the garage. The child was able to get in and get out easily and was all grown up because it was a real bed!

A couple of years later we could afford to buy a commercially manufactured ‘normal’ bed. I lent the little bed so someone who needed it.

When I went to retrieve it a few years later the bum didn’t have it. He’d given it to someone else. “That wasn’t the deal we had!” I told him.

“Well, it’s gone.” he told me with an infuriating rendition of cocky-casual. “Someone needed it more than you did”

I call bull on that one. Translation, “the kids mother was pretty!”

Impersonation of the temptress for illustrative purposes

So I made another one by the same design but added foam pads after the manner of water bed side caps. Those are three sided channels with foam stapled over them then capped with vinyl. Soft and friendly for that morning exit.

The bed making stopped until I had another no-beds-and-broke situation.

I was paying most of the unemployment checks to child support. The situation was so dire that I was renting my brothers living room. It was there that I constructed the historic massive bunkbeds. Each was configured to take the part of a private space shut off from the rest of the room for naps, sleep, reading, or play. The top one had a covered wagon type hoop cover for that purpose and the bottom one had curtains on bungee chord.

I spent over a hundred bucks for the router and the wood to make that practical but crude looking contraption. Then a fellow at work listened to my description of the build and said, “Well Denny, you shoulda told me. I had a set of wagon wheel bunk beds I didn’t know what to do with. I’da given them to you for nothing. I just took them to the goodwill.”

The next year I made another tiny bed for a toddler.

I also made a unique loft in my first art studio that also had a mattress because sometimes it was practical to sleep back there. Many a time I worked on art as two of my daughters played in that loft. The cieling was ten feet up and they were only three feet from touching it. Those were fun times. I listened to Enya and the Moody Blues and created pastel drawings while they made the happy backdrop of little girl chatter. Beautiful things come even from situations with a bad  core.

Marriage to their mother ended  and though we survived with our lives, the studio had to be left behind.

The next time I built a bed was in my new house (circa 1955, but I’m the second owner compliments of cigarettes which nudged the previous residents out a little sooner than they might otherwise have gone) which was a treasure trove of interesting build materials left behind in the attic and detached garage.

Each girl had her own room, so I took the projects on separately according to their temperaments. For Hannah, I thought it would be nice to build the bed high enough that underneath of it could serve as a play house getaway. So I build supports on the far walls and used heavy timbers to span the nearly ten feet from wall to wall. On that I built a pine frame of new wood. At one end I constructed a headboard with three secret compartments complete with shelves. These were designed to look solid and access was by simply lifting the sections to reveal ample stash space. At the foot of the bed was another large shallow box which appeared just to be vinyl capped cusions.

I don’t know if she ever used any of it. Later, when I inherited the room I did. It was a quarter magnet. Most of the almost sixty dollars in coin that I recovered from cleaning up the entire house this summer came from that headboard area where I would empty my pockets at the end of the day. I kept reading materials in the compartments and one of them held the air pump for the early sleep number air bed. So early that it works just fine but there is no number. It’s more like a sleep nothing bed. Pump it up, pump it out but there is no “hardness” number. Like the deaf dumb and blind kid and his pinball, you just go by feel.

Leading up to the bed were three progressively less wide steps, capped with padded vinyl that had been left over from the previous owners upholstery supplies. He restored Chevy Nomads and had some interesting seat cover material that I wish I’d kept for a car I worked on  later. There was just enough room on either side of the steps to provide access to the little under bed play room which had a rug, a cieling light, and black blinds from bed to floor.

Kids like forts and hideaways, so I figured this would be a big hit.

That bed stayed in place for ten or fifteen years, only coming down recently.

Over time I made three beds in the other room. First I did a poster bed with rods and curtains and tule. fancy ribbon ties were used to gather the tule to the posts and finish off the feminine persona. At Christmas, little lights were strung across the top and up the posts. Rachael was very much the holiday enthusiast whereas her sister was pretty much not. That bed was high also, but not as much. It still required a specially built stool for easy access. At it’s head I hung the butterfly painting.

This hung at the head of her bed

When she wanted to rearrange the room it was necessary to modify the bed and the posts had to go. Last year I used them in the garden for the pole beans. For a long time they were part of a swing set at someone elses house. I don’t think the wood is capable of wearing out.

Then I enlarged the bedroom by getting the bed as high as it could be, like a bunk bed wth no bottom bed. Underneath it was a dresser, a desk, a light, and curtains for privacy. Access above was via a custom ladder. I may have gotten it a little too close to the cieling but it worked.

When she went to college, I raised the bed even further to allow it to rest atop my flat file. Now it is supported by two legs and the flatfile and no one uses it. It’s not exactly cozy in that room now that it is packed with art supplies and Lotus parts including windshields and brake disks. The bed is piled high with new canvas bolts and the carpet I cut for my Europa.

Of course I had to make myself a waterbed. I’d carved the side boards out of clear fir back in the middle eighties and they begged use. To my surprise the water bed experience was nothing close to my pleasant recollections from an earlier time.

The bed was positioned to angle into a corner and had a specially built headboard to fit the space. I’d found a lamp at a garage sale that had many beveled glass bits that I removed and integrated into the elaborate little headboard design. Above the glass was a space that I used to hold a blanket upon which I stapled a stick. it served as a room darkener. I could unroll the blanket and it would blank out the light of both windows. Very handy when the sun wants to drench you with all it’s lively light but you need rest.

Because it was a waterbed, it came with the 1970’s era standard pedistals that were pine faced dressers in a pressboard and stick box. The drawers were not deep enough together to fill the underside of the bed so we had a secret passage between them behind a secret door. That led to the open area at the head of the bed that was under the headboard. When the kids were alone in the house between school and my arrival from work, that is the place the girls would high tail themselves toward to hide if anyone knocked on the door. If anyone entered the house, the girls would never be seen. It was a big enough space that even I fit. We all three went there for fun sometimes. Not often.

The waterbead. I always have to have a shelf for books and a lamp.

My Texas daughter texted me that she was thinking of building a bed and asked advice because  I know the ropes. I knew that it was more work than it looks like, that the results can be primitive, and the time it would take would be much more than expected. I told her it was better just to buy a ready made bed second hand, but I knew she wouldn’t go there. Her adventure had already begun with the playhouse in the back yard which she designed and built. She was hooked already and I knew it. I told her what might be involved and that she’d probably not end up with a bed she could resell.

It’s made. She did it. The torch is in her hands! Also in the hands of my son, who has built at least one bed.

As for me, I’m nearly cured. When I overhauled my furnishings few months ago, I took the home made bed out, threw away the home brew dresser, and got a new table for the kitchen. I bought a heavy solid oak headboard and foot board. To them I affixed a frame and base from the remains of the bed that was Hannah’s,  screwed together nice and proper. It’s not a store bought bed, but it looks to be. With my hybrid I’m easing back into a ‘normal’ bed. With the rest of the house, I’m edging toward  ‘normal’ interior spaces.  It’s a start.