In his new home, Kyle has a bedroom that will support a California King bed, with a mattress that is 72 inches wide and 84 inches long. We designed a custom “floating” platform 80 inches wide and almost eight feet long. The headboard alone is 27 inches tall and 74 inches wide. Our material choice was 2 inch thick white ash, stained with MinWax Dark Walnut and HVLP spray-finished with MinWax Water Based Oil Modified Polyurethane.
Due to the overall scale of this project and the mass of the materials used (the headboard alone weighed about 75 pounds), the relatively simple joinery employed was fairly challenging. Definitely a two-person job, with additional finishing help from Linda!
LL Johnson Lumber in Charlotte, Michigan did a great job milling some beautiful 10/4 white ash to the 2 inch finished thickness for us. Special thanks to Kyle’s cousin, Lucas, who welded up the custom-designed brackets that help support the massive headboard and mount the two stretchers that support the mid-spans of bed slats. The platform is topped with a very cool Leesa hybrid mattress.
Chopping 4/4 ash for slats
Easing slat edges with a palm router
A beautiful load of 10/4 white ash, milled to 2 inches thick by LL Johnson Lumber
Cross-cutting with a track saw
Waiting for a hand to joint a board for the headboard glue up
Headboard glue up with only two wide boards
Headboard “cooking” in parallel clamps
Raw stock for custom brackets from Alro Steel
FastenMaster HeadLok screws of various lengths
Stiles ready for routing slat ledges
Routing big rabbets with an edge guide
Hardware from McMaster-Carr for jig construction
Custom router jig and two drill jigs
Routing mortises in the ends of the 12 inch wide rails … vertically
Mortise routing jig closeup
Rail and stile mortises will accept floating tenons
Deep hole drilling with one of the drill jigs
Floating tenon blanks
Floating tenon dry fit
Welded up brackets
More welded up brackets
Routing relief for headboard brackets with a second router jig
Headboard bracket dry fit
Headboard bracket dry fit
Headboard dry fit to head rail
Installation of bed slat spacers
Transferring holes in one of the two foot assemblies
Leveling the headboard glue up with one of Grandpa Bill’s hand planes
Headboard hand planing detail
First dry fit of foot assemblies on main frame
All major components complete and ready for finishing
Priming the custom brackets
Custom brackets primed and ready for black satin finish
Setup for applying black satin Rustoleum with a rattle can
Staining with MinWax Dark Walnut
MinWax Dark Walnut stain
Flooding the headboard with stain
Stained headboard ready for clear coating
HVLP spray-finishing materials
10 x 10 spray booth set up in the workshop
Applying MinWax Water Based Oil Modified Polyurethane with an HVLP spray system
Finished components being packed up for delivery
The long-anticipated delivery and assembly day finally arrived
Setting up to assembly foot subassemblies … with kitty help!
Driving 10 inch long HeadLok fasteners to join stile to end rail
Flipping the main platform assembly right side up
Installing brackets for headboard installation
Carefully moving the “sturdy” assembly into place
Stretchers dropped beautifully into their custom brackets
Completed assembly with natural finish slats in place
California King sized Leesa hybrid mattress in its as-shipped state
Watching the Leesa mattress come into its final shape was kinda magical
Another joint project in the books, with lots of good memories and great nights of sleep to come!
