How to build a bed frame out of wood?

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Answer
Here are the key steps to build a simple wooden bed frame:

Materials Needed

  • 3x 2x6-8' framing lumber for the sides and supports
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  • 2x 2x3-8' framing lumber for the slat supports
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  • Wood screws (2" and 3.5" lengths)
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  • Wood stain or paint (optional)
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  • Slatted bed base or 1x3 boards for the slats
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Construction

  1. Cut the wood to size using a circular saw or miter saw. The side rails should be 2-3 inches shorter than the mattress width, and the end rails should be 2-3 inches shorter than the mattress length
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  2. Sand the wood pieces smooth, rounding the edges1
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    Apply stain or paint if desired
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  3. Assemble the frame by screwing the end rails to the side rails using 3.5" screws. Make sure the corners are square
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  4. Attach the 2x3 slat supports to the inside of the frame, screwing them in place with 2.5" screws. Space them 12-18 inches apart
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  5. Screw in the metal bed legs at each corner, drilling pilot holes first
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  6. Install the slats by laying them across the supports and securing with screws at each end
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    4. Use a slatted bed base kit for an easier option
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  7. Double check the frame is square and sturdy. Add any extra supports or screws needed for stability34.
That's it! A simple, budget-friendly bed frame you can build yourself in a day. Adjust the dimensions as needed for your specific mattress size
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Author: Martin Johnson - Off Grid Living



Key insights

  • 🧤 Wearing gloves is important for safety when working on DIY projects like building a bed frame.
  • Building a DIY bed frame can be a fun and rewarding project, especially when using simple measurements and techniques.
  • The process of building a DIY bed frame involves drilling pocket holes and using pocket screws to mount the pieces together.
  • The Delta 2 max with the extra battery can provide over 6,000 Watt hours of power, making it suitable for running all necessary tools for DIY projects.
  • Solar generators like Eco flow can keep refrigerators, freezers, and even furnaces running during power outages, providing essential backup power.
  • ️ Building a bed frame together can be a fun and bonding experience for a couple.
  • ️ The decision to make the bed frame a specific height was influenced by the desire to accommodate storage containers underneath, showing a thoughtful and practical approach to the design.

Timestamped Summary

  • 00:00 DIY bed frame materials purchased, project moved to porch due to rain, wearing gloves important for DIY projects.
  • 03:21 DIY queen size bed frame with extra space for mattress and different headboard design using one by sixes with a gap in between.
  • 06:25 Build DIY queen size bed frame using two by fours, pocket screws, glue, clamps, sand and stain for finished look despite rainy weather.
  • 09:01 The speaker uses ecoflow solar generators for the project, currently on sale, providing power for running tools and addressing potential power outages in the upcoming winter.
  • 11:31 A DIY queen size bed frame can be made easily and cheaply using simple materials and tools.
  • 13:29 Assemble DIY queen size bed frame using Jacobian stain, wait for it to dry, and protect carpet from stains.
  • 17:42 Joseph tests the space and builds a DIY queen size bed frame with extra storage and a platform for the mattress.
  • 21:23 Share your favorite bed in the comments, and check out our preparedness checklist for free.

Video Full Text

  • 00:00 All right I guess we better get back outside yeah. I like the orange one you both do you want to go okay. Let's get your leaves. He likes Home Depot all right so we need four by fours for the legs and the you know the corners of the bed. So we're getting these guys right here four by four by twelve. It's a little extra long but they seem to be the cleanest ones and the straightest ones that they've got. We're gonna have way extra but maybe it'll be firewood slim pickings on the 12 foot two by sixes well. They only had one 12 footer. So we're just getting regular studs and uh we'll just have a little bit extra extra. I'm feeling like. It's time to get up off the ground because the spiders are coming in and it's really distracting at night trying to sleep when you're thinking that their spider is going to crawl up over your face that's right clean up off of the ground. We'll just help the spiders go under the bed instead of on top hopefully yeah. I'm sure that's how spiders think don't you think that's how spiders think probably at least the spiders in our house yeah exactly as I'm thinking they're not. Gonna go on the bed save them up for when Sarah gets home. We'll see how much the OSB is just for fun well. It's 18.68 started turning blue in my search was over that's what I knew I've been waiting my whole life. We got kind of a longest load today. So we're putting the putting the red flag on the back just to keep it safe the rain's coming down. We're gonna have to move this project to the front porch. This is why you're supposed to wear gloves. I always forget got a big old nasty. Gash. I shouldn't say that everyone needs to wear gloves because Marty does just fine without gloves. Maybe your hands are just a little tougher. Huh maybe or his uh pain tolerance is a lot higher that's a good spot for you first thing.
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  • 03:21 We need to do is cut the post to length and I've got our measurements right here. We're basically just going to copy the beds that we built already any two that are 44 inches and two that are 22 and a half inches. Those would be our four posts for the bag look out. Kenny want to believe just make sure we're on here. It's good and good we're good. We're all squared up. Saw is cutting through that's nice go ahead and trim. This end off the factory end here get it down to our precise measurement. Oh look out there buddy same same. We got a little double decker bed going on over here. This guy goes this way. We're gonna have something that goes right. There. We came inside to do a little bit of figurine just to make sure we get it right you know because the rails go on there kind of like that and so you have some extra space inches. On each side and stuff. We didn't want it to be too tight. The beds we made for. Upstairs were a little too tight. You had to like really squish that mattress in there. So this one we're gonna add an inch of width and we're going to add an inch of length so that the mattress will fit down in there super nice. So it's going to be 59 inches wide and 79 inches long which will give us a total inside size of 81 by 61. All right I guess we better get back outside. I like the orange one better 59.79 oh look at that so nice 59.79 59.79. Don't forget guys. Okay don't forget 59.79 so I'm thinking about making the headboard. A little bit different than we did on the beds up in the apartment we're going to be using these guys right. Here. These are one by sixes and have a little bit of a gap in between them for the headboard instead of just a solid headboard maybe we'll figure it out as we go but that's the plan in my head right. Now Sunshine everyone light up every morning make my every dream come true.
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  • 06:25 Oh I can't describe. It took my tongue and tied it. We got one of the Cross piece or the long supports. Here two by fours go across this way setting on on this piece here to hold up the mattress. So the next step then do the other side of the course and we've got to drill some pocket hole. I think the pucker screws anyway some holes that go in here so it can mount to the post. We've got our pocket screw jig. Here. We're going to go ahead and drill our holes for our screws so that we can mount it all together. Thank you came inside because the floor is nice and smooth and flat and clean and then we can assemble the headboard in here. Nicely. We're gonna put some glue on it first windmill people on the floor ing every second I'm with you foreign goes on First and the prettiest ones go on the top because that's the part you're gonna. See so we want the cool knots on top then. This one I already got that Jules got the glue on there and then this one yep okay and this one put our clamps on one eternity. Later check it out. We've got the headboard built. We've got the foot built. We got the rails built right there we're letting the glue dry and then we'll sand them down stain them. Very famous good morning guys welcome back to the homestead. It is a bright and beautiful day here it's not bright. It's actually a rainy day. It's been rainy. Yesterday. It's going to be rainy. Today. We didn't make hardly any power yesterday and we're not gonna make hardly any power today either. But that is not gonna stop. Us. We're going to continue on with our bed project and Jules is actually going to start all the sand. In this is the first piece we're gonna. We're gonna do man check it out. I know I showed you to you earlier but and that came out nice huh. What do you think Joe's yeah. It looks beautiful looks really cool beautiful. I love all the knots yeah all right so.
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  • 09:01 I'll lay this down here and then we'll get. We'll get the sanding. We're gonna use 100 grits on our sanding project today are you ready. Let's try it. You might have noticed that we've been using our ecoflow solar generators to do this project. Some of you guys have wrote in and said that you'd like to have one but you just feel like they're just too expensive and we can totally understand that right now ecoflow is having a sale on their inventory up to 52 off might be a good opportunity for you to go over there and get one like Jules said we are using our solar generators for this project because it has been so cloudy and rainy that we don't want to use our house batteries to power our project. This is actually the Delta 2 max with the extra battery on top just the bottom unit alone which is actually where the power comes from is 2048 Watt hours of power. When you add this battery on top of it. You get an extra 2048 Watt hours of power and then you can add a third one on top of here which we don't have but that'll give you over 6 000 Watt hours of power and so you've seen us using this thing like cutting sanding all of that for this project no problem at all. This guy puts out a lot of power and is able to run pretty much all of our all of our tools that we need to use for a project like this but not only is it awesome for projects. You know winter is coming. I mean like we want snow and we want a lot of snow. We want snow from here all the way down to the ground I'd like to see six feet on the flat preferably eight but I'll settle for six. You know what comes with winter weather though power outages. Now. That's not a real problem for people that live off grid like us. But they are predicting some pretty severe weather out on the East Coast ah power outages man in Texas man when that thing iced over a couple years ago.
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  • 11:31 The power was out for a super long time and we want to keep our refrigerators running. We want to keep our freezers running we like to keep our house warm things like that well guys with a solar generator. Like this Eco flow here right you can do that I mean you can you can plug your refrigerator into it and run it for an extended period of time or if you have like a propane furnace right. But you need the power to run the fan and blow it throughout your house. You could plug your furnace into this unit and it will run like it's supposed to and heat up your house guys. It is. It is super important to have backup power when the power goes out especially in these days right. I mean everything that we run is like electronic and electric and all of that and and it's really hard to survive when you live in the city or in the suburbs right and you don't have all of the off. Grid appliances. The off-grid lighting sources and all of that kind of stuff to keep you going you need a backup power solution and one of the things that I really like about this unit for backup power is how fast you can actually charge it. It has two solar inputs on it so you can charge it with up to a thousand watts of solar or you can charge it off of the wall of course when you have power. But it can go from zero to eighty percent in like 43 minutes that is really fast like. Joe said they are having this super fall sale guys you can get up to 52 off one of their units and solar panels and all of that kind of cool stuff. There is a link in the description below. There is also a special code that you need to use down below to get an extra five percent off check out the link down below and if one of these is what you need well then you can get it super cheap right now oh check it out first fire of the Season Jules. It feels so so.
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  • 13:29 I'm gonna do all the staining and verithanine inside our beautiful home. I don't know what we're thinking righty. I don't know we're gonna lay this down though to protect the floor and then try not to Splatter although but I think we we check this out too man oh look at that 56 outdoors and 69 in here. It's going good. It's nice Marty. I think you did a really nice job thank you yeah you feel super super smooth see if we can the foot and the headboard right here without having to lay down another one okay. Another piece of paper well we've got Jacobian to the rescue again. This is like my favorite stain not like it is my favorite stain. This is what we've used on all of our doors all of our trim all of our baseboard throughout the whole house and I love how it turns out. So we're gonna do our bed frame just the same with me where the storm find a way to take. I think this was an experiment failed. We ran out of regular sponges so we thought we'd try the kitchen sponge but oh that it makes a huge huge mess. So I don't think we're gonna do that anymore look at that look at that and these we've got them all stained up. Now. We're gonna go ahead and bear thing them so that it can dry. It's been a couple hours past but uh bear within them up and then we can start putting this thing together and we'll show you how it's going to be all set up in the bedroom. Are you ready to sleep off of the floor oh um spiders crawl across my face. I'm sure that's what they're doing every night well. That's good. It's good trusts me a lot yeah you ready to start birthday today yeah. Let's do it all right you do the big one. I'll do the small ones okay a couple hours later and uh we've just been hanging out talking about the future and making plans and all that kind of fun stuff. You get to do when you're waiting for a very thing to dry. But we got the uh headboard here take it in the bedroom. Hopefully. It fits you know it's not a giant room. What do you think think it's gonna fit. Yeah. I think I think it's double check that the okay yeah it's getting heavy okay turning that colors turn to Colors okay maybe let's set it down here in the hallway and then get a piece of cardboard put underneath each one for now yeah yeah cut like a cardboard square or like a newspaper yeah okay okay. We don't want to stain our carpet sure all right so I'll carry this in and you do the deal.
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  • 17:42 Okay Joseph's giving us our our newspaper coasters here for temporary wife. That's right. It's so resourceful who doesn't want newspaper coasters. Yeah I could probably sell them okay all four ready okay. Let's do it let's do it so this will be the test to see how much space we got. I want to go ahead and put one down right here. Okay okay down over here okay all right cool. Gonna look much bigger. A little bit bigger not too much though I don't feel a whole lot bigger. It's a queen size so it's probably gonna go right about hereish. Okay hold that guy got it you do that one and I'll hold this one that's good so far yeah. All right we've got our corner. Here. We just need to make sure that we find the center here and line up the centers and then we can put our screws in it's good. It is bigger than our. I mean our old bed was a full and this is going to be a queen. So it's definitely bigger a little bit extra room storage space underneath. I really wanted it this height actually because we use those plastic totes like that you get at any store Walmart or Target or whatever and that you can actually slide under this the bed. So this is a good height for that so Perfect all right so three and a half inches wide. So we're going one and three quarter to the center of this. We got this side all locked in now time to do this side. Same process of course one and three quarter inches to the center right there right when I told my mom that we were making a bed frame. You know what she said what'd she say she said we're too young for such modern conveniences. We're gonna cut all of the slats that go in here now to hold the mattress up in the middle and we're cutting the mat 61 inches. We have half an inch extra on each side of the mattress so we got 61 inches in between because a queen size bed is 60 inches. So go cut all those guys we're gonna put OSB down on there to make like a platform. We have Seth in to help put our mattress on and this is actually a full mattress. We haven't picked out our queen size mattress yet so we're gonna make it work for a little while oh wow it's gonna be bigger man. Oh good my feet aren't going to hang off the edge as far anymore or your arms. Maybe yeah look at that there's a lot of extra room on each side we're gonna go ahead and a queen size mattress.
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  • 21:23 If you have one that you like really like you've had it for a few years. Now. Let us know down in the comments below because it's going to be probably a couple weeks until we order it and guys you know that we're into preparedness. We prepared a preparedness checklist for you. There is a QR code on the screen right over there that you can go ahead and scan with your smartphone or there's a link down in the description. Below you can download it print. It out stick it on your fridge. It's completely free and will help you get prepared for any trouble. That's coming down the road. We hope you guys have a really great day keep smiling.
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