Rustic Barnwood Twin Bed

Hertoolbelt
by Hertoolbelt
Late last summer my Dad called me up and told me that they are leveling Remo's barn. I'm sure my comments were something like nooooo, you can't take down that barn, hey wait what are you doing with all the wood, you're not going to burn it, right??? Remo had built a big hay barn back in his day, but over the years it had deteriorated and became a hazard structurally. So I talked my Dad into waiting until I could salvage as much wood as possible. Luckily he was good with that. I'm such a sucker for wood, and good barn wood is a limited commodity.
My first project with this reclaimed lumber is this beautiful rustic chevron bed for my son. I love to build with reclaimed lumber/barn wood, the natural character and weathering of the wood beautiful & it's free or cheap. To find free/cheap wood, look on craigslist or local classifieds ads, sometimes people will give you the wood if you take the building down for them. Or drive around and see if there are old barns in disarray, ask the owner if they are looking to get rid of it. It usually can't hurt to ask :-)
To make my lumber manageable I used a chain saw to roughly cut the boards to size. (Leave a little extra in case your saw doesn't cut straight.) When making the final cuts use a compound miter saw or table saw to get more precise cuts. I used a band saw to do the final cuts on the big beams.
(Please visit the blog post for detailed building dimensions and plans.) I designed the head board and foot board to have dado slots for the diagonal boards to slide into. I thought it would make a clean look and be forgiving on the diagonal cuts. I used my router and a straight bit to cut out the slots for the rails.
I used the table saw to cut the dado slots. The router could have done the job, but the table saw is faster :-)
I love how the bed turned out, so unique! See blog post link below for tutorial.
For plans to build this bed with readily available lumber from the hardware store visit http://www.hertoolbelt.com/chevron-twin-bed-plan/
Hertoolbelt
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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