New Job!

[Leon]

A good customer has commissioned me to build her a bed. For those that may have been following she was the one that sent me a squiggly line drawing that I posted and we had fun with. I AAMOF told her that we discussed it here. ;~)

Anyway I got the approval for something much different yesterday and will begin in the next several days.

This will be the third version of this bed that I designed about 6 years ago four my wife and I. It was the bed that went with the tower project. Our bed has 18 drawers in the bed frame, this third version will have 9 drawers in the bed frame.

This is the same customer that I recently built bedside end tables with drawers, and the entertainment center with mantle.

What I will be building.

Version two, I built this one about 4 years ago.

The original version in its present location.

I do plan on posting the process/progress at various stages.

Thoughts?

[Sonny]

+1

Only thing I can think of is: What kind of wood, this time, if different? Contrasting woods?

Sonny

[Leon]

Red Oak and that will receive a Candlelite colored gel stain. With the furniture that I design for my wife and I, I almost always use contrast but typically a customer does not want to take that chance... Even though I can show them what it will look like almost exactly.

[nailshooter41]

I like the new design as much as I do the original (in your bedroom). The newest form has a kind of clean Scandinavian feel to it, which may just be my imagination, but seems to be a direction you are leaning with longer, ge ntle flowing lines.

I wonder... could you make up a sample board of the color/finish on some of the scrap before you simply clear coat? When I did a lot of finishing on new woods I would get pieces of wood/plywood and finish with two colors/fin ishes on the same board. It seemed to help folks. Just a thought.

Robert

[Leon]

It seems my down stair furniture pieces get some type of non straight sections what I like to call show pieces. My seal the deal pieces if you will. ;-). I try to get potential new customers to see what I have built in our home. And although this customer has now bought 8 pieces, 6 jobs counting this one, I invited her and her husband out to see and feel our bed. This bed design eliminates the need for box springs and she was concerned about how that would feel. And then Kim cooked dinner for all of us and I think that was the last step necessary to sell this job. LOL

I do this at times but this customer knows what she wants and again has seen all of our pieces a few times. I will say that both were intrigued with our Amish made kitchen chairs and why I did not build them. So in this case she knows what a mix of different woods and or contrasting stains look like.

[G. Ross]

snip

Sounds sorta kinky to me.

[Leon]

LOL..... AAMOF when we first moved into our new home, just over 5 years ago, our surrounding neighbors, mostly women, would check in on the new people with the 3 car garage and all the WW equipment. At the time the only big pieces that we brought with us was the bedroom furniture. So the first lady that I met I offered to show her my bedroom. ;~) She delighted at telling the other women that she was the first that I invited to my bedroom.

Now, LOL, this current customer, has seen our bedroom before but was not buying a bedroom furniture at the time. When she and her husband came over on Sunday she asked ME to show her my bedroom.

Takes me back about 40 years....;~)

[sawdustmaker]

Sonny wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I've built 4 queen size beds over the years. Each time I think 'boy this is a big SOB'. Nice job.

[Leon]

Thank you. I have built a king and queen in this style and this one will be a king. I have also built a twin and a queen Murphy bed. And when another customer saves the money I will have another queen Murphy bed to build.

And Yes! They are big SOB's. LOL The furniture I build seems to fill walls rather than just spots in a room. For our new new home I have built

7, go together, pieces of furniture in the last 5 years. 6 of the pieces are 8' long, the seventh is 11' long. Our bed and side towers, in one of the links, covers 12' of wall space.

[Leon]

So I bought 109 lf of 1x8 red oak, a couple of sheets of 1/2" Baltic birch, a couple of 3/4" MDO and a couple of 1/4" plies for filler panels and drawer bottoms yesterday.

I use CutList Plus to optimize my cuts and one of the MDO illustrations showed no waste on width after all rip cuts. I usually don't like to plan things out that close but I did fine. I had 2-13" wide cuts and

7-3" wide cuts to come out of a 4x8 sheet of MDO. I got all with about 1/32" taken off the last rip. I used the track saw for the first rip at 26.125" and its blade is just under 1/8" wide. I try to precut, for the TS, easier to handle sizes.

Any way I cut the bed deck supports/drawer guides along with kick plate cut outs and cut outs for upper and lower perpendicular supports.

I'll be adding spacers, wood slides/races to the support panels and finally a face frame on both ends of the support panels.

[OFWW]

Two hidden drawers for a his and hers self defense weapon?

[Leon]

There are actually 3 hidden drawers but they are also more trouble to get to.

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