Woodwork - but NOT Baseboards!

The last month has been rather manic, with the house move and sorting all our stuff into the new house (the garage is still full of boxes waiting to be emptied!), plus the kids have moved school, and we have had the preparations for Christmas. Work has been busy too. So no modelling to report.

However I have had a spot of woodwork to do. The house doesn't need work but we did decorate my daughter's bedroom. She had been in a toddler bed but we wanted her to have a proper bed, the trouble is the room is 6' 3" across - enough space for a mattress but not for a bed-frame, and to put a bed along the room would make it feel much smaller. Undaunted I bought a raised bed-frame (second-hand, it is less daunting to modify when cheap!) and set to with the saw...

I ended up removing about 2 inches from the length of the frame, this meant all the joints needed to be re-made at one end. Fortunately they were just a peg and bolt arrangement, but I did need to buy a 10mm drill bit for the pegs! I confess my hand-drilling was not square or accurate but with a bit of wiggling I got it all to fit together. 

Assembly was tricky as the bolts fit from the outside of the frame, but the proximity of the walls (and no space to bring the bed in assembled) meant that the order of assembly had to be carefully planned! The lengths were bolted together first then the end cross-pieces. The rails from the foot of the bed were removed to allow the mattress to overhang to the wall, and one was refitted lower down to retain rigidity. Finally a couple of metal corner brackets were added to keep it all square (in case my home-made joints were not rigid enough!)

The end result is a bed where we want it, that seems solid enough (and is free-standing from the walls), and one very happy little girl. (You may notice the room has also been decorated to her choice of colours). So it seems my experience making model railway baseboards has come in useful with a spot of home carpentry!