The Ikea bed (a queen-sized Malm), after being dutifully moved around over the last six or so years, had begun to display symptoms of the dreaded "wiggles". The slats had also picked up the bad habit of unceremoniously dropping between the (now distended) supports and causing all sorts of frustration, back pain, a mid-sleep surprises. I'd been tempted by the idea of trying to build a bed since I bought the table saw, and finally decided April was the month. The design was pretty constrained though; not only would it need to be easy to get up (and eventually down) a spiral staircase, it also had to be something that we could cut on our 4' x 6' balcony. The standard queen bed dimensions are 60" x 80", which astute observers will notice does not at all fit on the balcony. Thankfully, I came across a handful of designs that were essentially platform beds composed of boxes with drawers and supports added on.
While it's true I did tweak some of the dimensions and details, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this video, which not only provided the fundamental design, also helped me dodge some snags along the way. One of the first big learnings of this project: nicer plywood gets super expensive, and long drawers do too. The four 8' x 4' sheets this project required ran about $300, the drawer slides about another $100, and roughly another $100 for the miscellaneous bits (edge banding, dowel stock, drawer pulls, fasteners, etc).
This was also my first project using pocket-hole screws, which, I know, some people view as cheating. Clearly this project wasn't meant to be fine woodworking, but rather functional furniture that I dearly wanted to have done within the time of a month (mostly evenings and weekend mornings). I did not, however, have a brad nailer / pin nailer, some glue and clamps ended up doing a lot more work than I anticipated. Rather than run through the entire process step-by-step, I'm just providing a few photos I snapped along the way (skip to the end to see the final result). For the finish we just sanded with 320 git with an orbital sander and put on two coats of wipe-on oil-based polyurethane, with a hand-sanding at 400 git in between coats.
Clearly the next project is building a new headboard. It's been a few days already and I'm still incredibly stoked to have more storage as well as a better night's sleep! The biggest part of this for me has been getting a bit of practice on a larger-scale project; now basic furniture projects don't seem quite so intimidating!
It looks awesome. You and Ouliana are a great creative team.