Yes, I Used Pinterest To Build This Platform Bed

My wife has been hooked to pinterest, and she came across a design for a platform bed.  She was excited and told me, "Hey you can build this bed from pinterest!"

Immediately, I replied, "Ugh... Pinterest.."  See, to me, pinterest is a social networking things for crafts and knitting and none guy stuff.  With hesitation, I checked it out because he have been trying to figure out what to do with a full size mattress we have.  In our house, the stairway is to narrow to get even a full size box spring upstairs, and to have a split one custom built isn't cheap.

After looking at the design from ana-white.com, I was impressed.  It gave me the materials I would need, fairly detailed instructions, and step by step instructions.

Now, before I go any further, if you've never picked up a drill or hammer before, this may not be a project for you.  There's some implied things they don't tell you, but if you've got a little bit of experience you'll do just fine.  The only thing I changed about the plan, was I made the feet of the bed (made out of tapered 2X4's) twice as long.  We wanted to store things under the bed.

It isn't completely finished here in this picture.  I had to build the bed in the room because it wouldn't fit upstairs.  I need to sand and stain it, but I'm going to wait until it's a little warmer out and I can open the windows for ventilation.

A couple of tips from my experience:

1.  Triple Check that you are using straight boards.  Especially the 2X6's.

2.  You really do have to pre drill every screw hole.  I tried to skip that step once and immediately split the wood on a 1x3.

3.  Clamps make it a lot easier to get the boards square, buy some clamps, they aren't expensive.

4.  For the trim pieces, buy select boards.  They're more expensive but they look way nicer.