It's a Bed, Closet, Dresser, & Bookshelf all in 1! (With Build Plans)
The Art of Building a Bed: From Baby Bear to Mama Bear and Beyond
Building a bed is one of the greatest woodworking projects you can undertake, offering endless possibilities for design and functionality. In this article, we'll explore how to build a bed from basic to elaborate, with plenty of tips and tricks along the way.
Starting with the Basics: The Baby Bear Bed
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Our journey begins with the "baby bear" version of our bed, which is essentially a simple frame with a mattress and some basic storage. This is an excellent starting point for beginners, as it allows you to develop your skills and confidence in woodworking before moving on to more complex projects. The baby bear bed is a great example of how a bed can be built from scratch, using basic materials like lumber and hardware.
Adding Edge Banding and Pocket Holes
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Once we have our basic frame, we can start adding some finishing touches. In this case, we're going to add edge banding to give our bed a sleek and modern look. Edge banding is a simple process that involves attaching thin strips of wood to the edges of the bed frame using glue and nails. We'll also be adding pocket holes to the drawers, which will make it easy to assemble and disassemble the bed.
Building the Drawers
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Next, we're going to build the drawers that will go underneath our bed. This is a relatively simple process, as we'll just need to create some basic boxes with lids. However, there are plenty of ways to join these boxes together, including using pocket holes, dovetails, and finger joints. We'll be using pocket holes for simplicity and ease of assembly.
Adding the Bottom Panel
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The bottom panel is another crucial component that will make our bed strong and stable. In this case, we're going to use a dado stack to attach it to the walls, but you can also use pocket holes or other joining techniques. The key is to create a smooth and even surface that will fit perfectly into the dado.
Upgrading to Mama Bear
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As we've shown in our previous videos, building a bed from scratch can be an exciting and rewarding experience. However, we also know that there's nothing wrong with upgrading or modifying your project as you go along. In this case, we've taken our baby bear bed and added some extra features to make it more elaborate.
Adding the Library Element
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One of the things that sets Mama Bear apart from the baby bear is its library element. This feature adds a whole new level of functionality to our bed, with plenty of storage space for books and other items. We've taken design cues from Murphy beds and bookcases to create this unique feature.
Finishing Touches
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Once we have all our components built, it's time to assemble everything together. In this case, we're going to add the drawer faces, pulls, and other finishing touches that will make our bed look like a million bucks.
Painting the Bed
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Finally, we get to paint our bed! We've applied multiple coats of paint to give it a smooth and even finish, and now it's time to reveal our finished product. With its sleek design and modern look, Mama Bear is sure to be the centerpiece of any bedroom.
The Future of Bed Building
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As we can see from this article, building a bed is an art form that offers endless possibilities for creativity and innovation. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned pro, there's always something new to learn and explore in the world of woodworking. We'll be continuing to build beds on our channel, with plenty of tips, tricks, and tutorials along the way. So if you want to see more variety and inspiration, be sure to check out our playlist of bed building videos!
The Tools You Need
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As we've demonstrated throughout this article, there are several tools that can make a big difference in your woodworking journey. From table saws and dado blades to jigs and joinery techniques, the right tools can help you build with confidence and precision.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
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Finally, it's worth noting some common mistakes that beginners might make when building a bed. In this case, we've been careful not to block any windows or fire extinguishers, but there are plenty of other pitfalls to watch out for. By following our tips and tricks, you can avoid these mistakes and build a beautiful bed that will be the envy of all your friends.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI'm Josh and I like to make stuff we are back in my boys room where we just recently finished the loft bed and in this spot we're going to build a bed for my second son now on the channel we have built tons of beds before of all different types before I started working I like to make stuff I used to build Furniture so I built a lot of beds myself but in this video besides showing you the design and the construction for this bed I am here to convince you that whether this is your first project or your 100th project while building a bed is the absolute perfect woodworking project please you may be asking yourself why are you not just building another loft bed or one of the variations that you guys made in that space it makes a lot of sense right but this loft bed will not fit in that space against that wall and it will block that window and I know that because we use the AR models that we talked about last time now that I know that the Loft bed's not going to fit I had to design a bed that will fit in the space and it will fit my son's needs so now that I have this model pulled up on an iPad I can see it a little bit larger it's not going to block the window it doesn't block the smoke alarm or the light switch but this is what we're building so it's a combination of a couple of old I like to make stuff projects we have the storage underneath the bed from the four post bed we have to wrap around bookcases from the Murphy bed we have the simple bookcase all these are plans that we've made I'm just going to take them and smush them all together in this new bed design that my son and my family absolutely loves so now it's time to go back to the store cut up some of those pieces just like we did for the loft bed and get to assembly now this may look daunting because there's a lot of really big panels but all of these panels are going to become the huge bed that we're going to put in the space But first we're going to start with a simple bed frame which is essentially a rectangle that can hold a mattress now we're going to use three different I likes to make stuff projects like I mentioned earlier to go from baby bear to mama bear to eventually pop a bear for this project and it's all going to work out we're going to start cutting these pieces down one at a time now I made the claim earlier that a bed is the perfect woodworking project no matter if it's your first project or your 100th and that's absolutely true a bed being a box that holds a mattress to impress your friends and family can be built with a circular saw it can also be built with a very expensive table saw the output is exactly the same I use this for lots of projects in the past and I have since upgraded so I'm going to use my table saw which is faster and a little more precise you can do everything you need to do on a circular saw thank you it is the next day I have organized all the pieces that we cut yesterday so we can start assembling the bed but the design came from a previous I like to make stuff project a while ago Bob built a four post canopy bed for his daughter and it had a lot of drawers underneath which I really love and I'm going to take that efficiency of storing things under the bed rather than having a dresser in the room and I'm going to steal it I'm going to put it into this bed so we have those pieces we're going to assemble that chunk right now and then we'll talk about the drawers in a minute foreign banding to all the important parts of the bed that are going to be listed in the plans we're going to have available and If you hi B I'm trying to record oh it's not leaving all right we are adding Edge banding to some important parts of the bed right now and it occurred to me that it is an unspoken rite of passage if you work it I like to make stuff to make a bed even if you have zero experience so Megan you've made a bed before I have I actually made the four poster canopy bed and you helped me make it and that's what this base is it's pretty cool so we're going to have some pictures on screen from again the most novice like these are ones I made at the very beginning to ones I've worked up my skills and now things are a little bit nicer because a bed is the best woodworking project like it's really simple tools really simple materials and it makes a really big impact the b word and the whole well you're holding a b well please take it away I didn't mean to talk I'm sorry oh it sure is look there's a b okay we're gonna put them outside her Juanita you can't stay here right now that's where people's hands need to go oh yeah there she goes bye later gator no you can't go in there there's a whole family it's already happening it's already happening the apocalypse all right now that the beef Fiasco is over uh we talked about people's beds why I'm gonna ask Anthony who's holding camera why is making a bed the best woodworking project uh what my first I've made two beds my first project ever was a really simple bed made out of like one by sixes and a miter saw that was it and uh everybody needs a bed right it's practical it saved me a butt load of money I was in college you don't need specialty tools so Megan your first project was the sofa table that we did in a video but you've also made a bed so why is making a bed the best woodworking project um I knew exactly what I wanted I knew what I wanted it to look like at the time we were living in a 100 year old house so having a bed that fit that bedroom very specifically was key for me so I think like the customizable part of it but the fact that I was able to kind of do a lot of it by myself was really great and very empowering foreign it did not take that much time to go from the store to a little bit of edge banding and pocket holes to a fully functional bed so as we talked about like this is the baby bear version like you could put a mattress on this and be a hero in your house but I believe in you and you can upgrade because a bed is the greatest woodworking project you can go from very basic to quite elaborate so in the next step we're going to be putting the drawers and stuff in here just like the previous I like to make stuff canopy bed and it's going to look amazing but again you can level up you can stop here if you need to but you can do more thank you foreign all right I know this looks a little nuts we took our baby bear bed and we added a bunch of pieces to it but essentially we just added the drawer spaces so these will have drawers that comes out this direction this will have a false drawer because it can't draw where this drawer is drawing and then there will be a little drawer to go behind where these drawers are drawing it'll be great I'm going to make the drawers here in a second and then our Mama Bear bed will be all done and ready to move in the room drawers are super easy it's essentially a box without a top there's lots of different ways to join these together in the corners I'm going to be doing pocket holes as we've done on the rest of this build you can also use special jigs to do dovetails like Bob has done in his kitchen you can do finger joints which I've done in other projects the sky's the limit as to how to join these Corners together but for Simplicity we're going to use pocket holes now the bottom is another story the bottom panel is going to be fit into the walls with a dado stack you can also pocket hole them in it'll be super simple and strong I'm going to use my dado blades because I have them and I'm going to be cutting grooves into each one of the walls that will accept that bottom panel I'll Fold It Up pocket all it together and our drawer will be done if you don't have a table saw and you don't want to invest in a dado stack or you can't because of where you live you can also use a router all right yesterday we finished the basic construction of the bed I'm almost done with all the drawers underneath I just have to add the drawer faces but before I do that I'm going to add the drawer pulls and there's a really inexpensive jig to be able to set the dimensions of the drawer poles in your drawer face and to add them very simply once these are done we're going to go up into the room put the bed in place install the drawer faces and then we're going to come down here and cut the rest of these for the last bits of the bed foreign to add the built-ins or like the library element to this whole project and I took some design cues from the Murphy bed that I built downstairs in my basement it has the bed in the middle and it has like a lot of storage on the sides and the top and on top of this whole unit I'm also taking design cues from the simple bookcase we also have plans for that project which was very nice so I'm going to take those smush them together I have these pieces here that we need to assemble and once this is all in place we're going to connect this and the bed give it some paint and it'll be all done all right foreign thank you after a few coats of paint the bed is all done and it looks fantastic we're able to empty out a dresser and put all the stuff in the drawers under here empty out a couple bookcases to fill this space we really maximize the area in this tiny room in this bed and this just goes to show that a bed is the absolute perfect woodworking project you can make it as simple as you want or you can go a little bit further and make it look amazing now if you want to make this bed or any versions of the ones that we talked about in this video we're going to have plans available and if you want to make the loft bed that we made in the last video we have those available as well they'll be linked down in the description we've made tons of beds on the channel we're going to have a playlist of all of the ones in case you want to see more variety and when Bob gets back from vacation he's on edge banding Duty because I'm absolutely done after these beds if you want to see me make a fool of myself making this video stick around and watch the bloopers Bobby watch out and add for a few the tools are I can see that it doesn't block the window it doesn't block the fire extinguisher that were cut down to fit in the car you knowI'm Josh and I like to make stuff we are back in my boys room where we just recently finished the loft bed and in this spot we're going to build a bed for my second son now on the channel we have built tons of beds before of all different types before I started working I like to make stuff I used to build Furniture so I built a lot of beds myself but in this video besides showing you the design and the construction for this bed I am here to convince you that whether this is your first project or your 100th project while building a bed is the absolute perfect woodworking project please you may be asking yourself why are you not just building another loft bed or one of the variations that you guys made in that space it makes a lot of sense right but this loft bed will not fit in that space against that wall and it will block that window and I know that because we use the AR models that we talked about last time now that I know that the Loft bed's not going to fit I had to design a bed that will fit in the space and it will fit my son's needs so now that I have this model pulled up on an iPad I can see it a little bit larger it's not going to block the window it doesn't block the smoke alarm or the light switch but this is what we're building so it's a combination of a couple of old I like to make stuff projects we have the storage underneath the bed from the four post bed we have to wrap around bookcases from the Murphy bed we have the simple bookcase all these are plans that we've made I'm just going to take them and smush them all together in this new bed design that my son and my family absolutely loves so now it's time to go back to the store cut up some of those pieces just like we did for the loft bed and get to assembly now this may look daunting because there's a lot of really big panels but all of these panels are going to become the huge bed that we're going to put in the space But first we're going to start with a simple bed frame which is essentially a rectangle that can hold a mattress now we're going to use three different I likes to make stuff projects like I mentioned earlier to go from baby bear to mama bear to eventually pop a bear for this project and it's all going to work out we're going to start cutting these pieces down one at a time now I made the claim earlier that a bed is the perfect woodworking project no matter if it's your first project or your 100th and that's absolutely true a bed being a box that holds a mattress to impress your friends and family can be built with a circular saw it can also be built with a very expensive table saw the output is exactly the same I use this for lots of projects in the past and I have since upgraded so I'm going to use my table saw which is faster and a little more precise you can do everything you need to do on a circular saw thank you it is the next day I have organized all the pieces that we cut yesterday so we can start assembling the bed but the design came from a previous I like to make stuff project a while ago Bob built a four post canopy bed for his daughter and it had a lot of drawers underneath which I really love and I'm going to take that efficiency of storing things under the bed rather than having a dresser in the room and I'm going to steal it I'm going to put it into this bed so we have those pieces we're going to assemble that chunk right now and then we'll talk about the drawers in a minute foreign banding to all the important parts of the bed that are going to be listed in the plans we're going to have available and If you hi B I'm trying to record oh it's not leaving all right we are adding Edge banding to some important parts of the bed right now and it occurred to me that it is an unspoken rite of passage if you work it I like to make stuff to make a bed even if you have zero experience so Megan you've made a bed before I have I actually made the four poster canopy bed and you helped me make it and that's what this base is it's pretty cool so we're going to have some pictures on screen from again the most novice like these are ones I made at the very beginning to ones I've worked up my skills and now things are a little bit nicer because a bed is the best woodworking project like it's really simple tools really simple materials and it makes a really big impact the b word and the whole well you're holding a b well please take it away I didn't mean to talk I'm sorry oh it sure is look there's a b okay we're gonna put them outside her Juanita you can't stay here right now that's where people's hands need to go oh yeah there she goes bye later gator no you can't go in there there's a whole family it's already happening it's already happening the apocalypse all right now that the beef Fiasco is over uh we talked about people's beds why I'm gonna ask Anthony who's holding camera why is making a bed the best woodworking project uh what my first I've made two beds my first project ever was a really simple bed made out of like one by sixes and a miter saw that was it and uh everybody needs a bed right it's practical it saved me a butt load of money I was in college you don't need specialty tools so Megan your first project was the sofa table that we did in a video but you've also made a bed so why is making a bed the best woodworking project um I knew exactly what I wanted I knew what I wanted it to look like at the time we were living in a 100 year old house so having a bed that fit that bedroom very specifically was key for me so I think like the customizable part of it but the fact that I was able to kind of do a lot of it by myself was really great and very empowering foreign it did not take that much time to go from the store to a little bit of edge banding and pocket holes to a fully functional bed so as we talked about like this is the baby bear version like you could put a mattress on this and be a hero in your house but I believe in you and you can upgrade because a bed is the greatest woodworking project you can go from very basic to quite elaborate so in the next step we're going to be putting the drawers and stuff in here just like the previous I like to make stuff canopy bed and it's going to look amazing but again you can level up you can stop here if you need to but you can do more thank you foreign all right I know this looks a little nuts we took our baby bear bed and we added a bunch of pieces to it but essentially we just added the drawer spaces so these will have drawers that comes out this direction this will have a false drawer because it can't draw where this drawer is drawing and then there will be a little drawer to go behind where these drawers are drawing it'll be great I'm going to make the drawers here in a second and then our Mama Bear bed will be all done and ready to move in the room drawers are super easy it's essentially a box without a top there's lots of different ways to join these together in the corners I'm going to be doing pocket holes as we've done on the rest of this build you can also use special jigs to do dovetails like Bob has done in his kitchen you can do finger joints which I've done in other projects the sky's the limit as to how to join these Corners together but for Simplicity we're going to use pocket holes now the bottom is another story the bottom panel is going to be fit into the walls with a dado stack you can also pocket hole them in it'll be super simple and strong I'm going to use my dado blades because I have them and I'm going to be cutting grooves into each one of the walls that will accept that bottom panel I'll Fold It Up pocket all it together and our drawer will be done if you don't have a table saw and you don't want to invest in a dado stack or you can't because of where you live you can also use a router all right yesterday we finished the basic construction of the bed I'm almost done with all the drawers underneath I just have to add the drawer faces but before I do that I'm going to add the drawer pulls and there's a really inexpensive jig to be able to set the dimensions of the drawer poles in your drawer face and to add them very simply once these are done we're going to go up into the room put the bed in place install the drawer faces and then we're going to come down here and cut the rest of these for the last bits of the bed foreign to add the built-ins or like the library element to this whole project and I took some design cues from the Murphy bed that I built downstairs in my basement it has the bed in the middle and it has like a lot of storage on the sides and the top and on top of this whole unit I'm also taking design cues from the simple bookcase we also have plans for that project which was very nice so I'm going to take those smush them together I have these pieces here that we need to assemble and once this is all in place we're going to connect this and the bed give it some paint and it'll be all done all right foreign thank you after a few coats of paint the bed is all done and it looks fantastic we're able to empty out a dresser and put all the stuff in the drawers under here empty out a couple bookcases to fill this space we really maximize the area in this tiny room in this bed and this just goes to show that a bed is the absolute perfect woodworking project you can make it as simple as you want or you can go a little bit further and make it look amazing now if you want to make this bed or any versions of the ones that we talked about in this video we're going to have plans available and if you want to make the loft bed that we made in the last video we have those available as well they'll be linked down in the description we've made tons of beds on the channel we're going to have a playlist of all of the ones in case you want to see more variety and when Bob gets back from vacation he's on edge banding Duty because I'm absolutely done after these beds if you want to see me make a fool of myself making this video stick around and watch the bloopers Bobby watch out and add for a few the tools are I can see that it doesn't block the window it doesn't block the fire extinguisher that were cut down to fit in the car you know\n"