• Published on | Dec 03, 2006 | by FozzTexx

No more sleeping on the floor!

It took 5 days, too much spent on wood and knock down hardware, a lot of hard work, and suffering in a cold garage. It still needs to be sanded, stained, and sealed, but who knows if I'll ever get around to it now that I set it up. Most of the work involved fixing goobers that my power tools caused when they tried to exert a will of their own.

Trying to get the holes made in exactly the right places to use the knock down hardware was also really difficult. It seems you need a CNC to do it. I made jig after jig and tested on scrap pieces, and never got the holes in quite the right place. But most were close enough that it went together.

The bed is actually a platform bed. There's no box spring, there's a large platform twenty inches off the floor that holds my air mattress. I made the frame large enough to take a California queen mattress. The plan is that I will probably replace the air mattress with a soft-side waterbed at some point. I'll have to build some kind of scaffolding in the center to support the weight of a waterbed, but I should be able to put those supports 8-12 inches away from the edge where it will mostly be hidden.

The height was determined by measuring several of my mid-tower computers. I wanted to make sure there was enough clearance to slide them underneath, just in case I decide to move them all into my bedroom to keep it warm for the winter. I probably won't because it's a big job, but you never know.

I actually only suffered in a cold garage for 4 days. The last day I used my dad's kerosene heater to warm it up. It did a great job. I was able to take off my sweatshirt and work in a t-shirt. When I fired it up at 9am it was 51 in the garage. When I turned it off at 3pm, it was up to 74. It did have a distinctive smell the whole time (smelled like camping), but when I was out there I couldn't tell. It was only when I came back into the garage from being in the house that I noticed the smell. When I turned it off it let off a black cloud for a second, but I didn't notice the smell being any stronger. Maybe because my garage is so large. The only bad thing was it burned through a gallon of kerosene.

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