oh yeah, about that-
So I may or may not have mentioned what that last bit was all about.
Back in the fall I found an ad on craigslist while I was trolling (or is it trawling?) for cheap wood or anything interesting that I could find.
I'd just been working in a shop for several months and was even more clueless and impulsive about this new thing I wanted to do with my future than I am now, and was likely to make bad investments. Fortunately, I stumbled upon something incredible in this instance.
There's a farmhouse about 10 minutes north of Worcester that had been renovated/restored by its owners about a year ago, and though they tried to reuse as much of the original wood that had been torn out as possible, they still had a lot left over. It's almost 200 years old, had been sitting in a pile behind the shed for a year and they were looking for someone to come get it all. Free. Reclaimed wood is a big deal, and if you buy it ready to work with, it can go for $14 a board foot. That ain't cheap. Difference is, that stuff is clean and dry and milled and metal-free. A lot of work goes into every piece to get it to that point. What I have here is the first stage. It's been removed from the house, but that's it- and it's been sitting in the weather for a long time.
Somehow I was the only one who showed any real interest, so between then and now I've made a couple of trips out there in rented vans and will make one more trip with a 15-ft truck to get the rest.
It's not in perfect condition, mostly from sitting outside for a long time getting rained and snowed on repeatedly, but it's still amazing stuff. There are hundreds of hand-cut iron nails and newer steel nails to be pulled out, 200 years' worth of dirt to clean off, and lots of moisture that has to slowly evaporate from inside. The nails are the worst part because most of them are so old and brittle and rusted that even if they're pulled gently, pieces of iron will still be left inside. This is mostly a problem because bits of metal or sand wear down machine blades very quickly, if they don't actually chip them outright. I'm going to try to find a cheap used planer I can use to quickly clean off the rough, dirty surfaces without having to worry too much about every tiny bit of metal - there are really a lot of nails, and a lot of them don't want to go anywhere.
Anyway, I've had some of this stuff sitting around for months, and between the water, the nails, and the rough condition, it would have been impossible to just start making fancy furniture out of any of it. Meanwhile, though, I'd decided months ago that I needed to get rid of my old bed and get a loft bed. I could buy a used ikea contraption for cheap, but have you ever seen those things? I thought it would be much more fun (and much nicer in the end) to try to make one from some of this wood. I wouldn't need to remove every nail or try to make any of the boards perfectly straight or make any fancy joinery because I'll inevitably be moving at some point and so anything I have of that size has to be able to be dismantled to the point where it will fit through a door and into a truck.
Most of you have seen my room. It's not really small. You're probably wondering why I'd feel the need to have a loft bed in the first place. When you get to the pictures below, note the insane amount of stuff still cluttering up the place even after the SS Queen Size has been removed. That's just how it is.
I thought for weeks and weeks about how to make this happen, and of course I went from imagining all kinds of mortise and tenon timberframing style fancypants stuff (highly impractical at this point) to just throwing a shitload of drywall screws into it all (quick and dirty). I caved because I knew that if I tried to go the fancy route, it'd be a long, long time before I got anywhere with it, the wood wasn't really ready for that anyway, it would make moving difficult, and I really just needed a new bed asap. The old one was too soft and creaky and was making all my old joints ache. So I borrowed some cordless tools from work, bought a box of 4" drywall screws, and started hacking away.
The frame was supposed to be easy; holding up boards longer than I am tall, trying to keep them level and flat against each other with one hand and maybe a knee while trying to push a 3 or 4 inch long screw into the end with the other hand wasn't really that easy. I did have to reposition things a couple of times and I definitely plunged the screwgun into my thumb at the end of the first night out of laziness and exhaustion. It's fine- I'll just need a bandaid on it for a few months. In the end, though, I got it square and level enough to feel comfortable with.
None of these boards are actually flat or straight, but considering how old and abused they are, they're pretty damned close. Those slats in the second picture are mostly spalted maple that I already had sitting around that I did make sure to plane down so this thing wouldn't be shedding too much dust for a billion years.
I have plenty of boards that aren't in very good shape that were fine for a project like this but not necessarily for real deal furniture. I didn't have them all at home, though. And I'm a tough guy, as well, so I figured 3 steps or rungs to climb would be plenty. the top rung is 64" from the ground: my height. It feels fine climbing up- climbing down is another story. Especially for someone with short legs. Especially also at 4 am when I have to pee and can barely walk as it is. We'll see whether another gets added later- I may have to fall flat on my ass in the middle of the night before I'm convinced.
This stuff was roughsawn 200 years ago and hasn't been cleaned or touched really in any way since then, so when I started shuffling these things around in my room back in the fall, they shed dust almost constantly. Between that and the cat hair that had been building up in my absence over the past couple of years, it was nasty in here. Even more motivation to get this thing done. The other half of the reason I had thought to build this thing was to keep the cat out. The cat hair was really irritating to some people, myself included.
Unfortunately, months later, though this stuff had finally dried out a bit, it was still filthy. I did chisel off a lot which created an interesting surface on the sides but was too labor intensive for the whole thing - in a fit of insanity I thought I could save some time by bringing an orbital sander from work and using that for the shelf up top, if nothing else. Well, I did that for about 5 minutes, and it created such a thick cloud of nasty dust in here that I had to stop. I knew that might happen, but I had to try. Plan B was to put a relatively thick coat of polyurethane on the surfaces I needed dustless and smooth enough to use but couldn't hand sand.
This picture is pre poly. It looks odd from such a foreshortened view, but I had to make it wide enough to reach the wall from the outside rail to secure the whole thing. To make that happen, the 3rd board had to be tossed in there for width, and a 4th runs underneath against the wall- what you can't really see in this photo is that the shelf runs the entire length of the bed. It's nice- plenty of shelf space for all those things I need at 4 am on a school night - like bandaids and advil for when I fall on my ass because there aren't enough rungs to climb down on. 
After I got it all together and went out and got a futon mattress (I sleep much better on them than regular mattresses!) I still had a bunch of stuff all over the place and everything had a thick coating of grayish-green dust on it, but there was already more space in here. So I moved the drawing table in from the living room. It wasn't bad where it was, and for whatever reason my roommates aren't big on living rooms anyway, but it kind of cluttered it up out there so I dragged it in. Maybe I'll use it more often now.
I can stand up underneath- the slats are about 67" from the ground - but I definitely bump my head on that middle rail all the time. Small price to pay for the tree fort/jungle gym I never had when I was a kid.
See how tall that ladder is?
Back in the fall I found an ad on craigslist while I was trolling (or is it trawling?) for cheap wood or anything interesting that I could find.
I'd just been working in a shop for several months and was even more clueless and impulsive about this new thing I wanted to do with my future than I am now, and was likely to make bad investments. Fortunately, I stumbled upon something incredible in this instance.
There's a farmhouse about 10 minutes north of Worcester that had been renovated/restored by its owners about a year ago, and though they tried to reuse as much of the original wood that had been torn out as possible, they still had a lot left over. It's almost 200 years old, had been sitting in a pile behind the shed for a year and they were looking for someone to come get it all. Free. Reclaimed wood is a big deal, and if you buy it ready to work with, it can go for $14 a board foot. That ain't cheap. Difference is, that stuff is clean and dry and milled and metal-free. A lot of work goes into every piece to get it to that point. What I have here is the first stage. It's been removed from the house, but that's it- and it's been sitting in the weather for a long time.
Somehow I was the only one who showed any real interest, so between then and now I've made a couple of trips out there in rented vans and will make one more trip with a 15-ft truck to get the rest.
It's not in perfect condition, mostly from sitting outside for a long time getting rained and snowed on repeatedly, but it's still amazing stuff. There are hundreds of hand-cut iron nails and newer steel nails to be pulled out, 200 years' worth of dirt to clean off, and lots of moisture that has to slowly evaporate from inside. The nails are the worst part because most of them are so old and brittle and rusted that even if they're pulled gently, pieces of iron will still be left inside. This is mostly a problem because bits of metal or sand wear down machine blades very quickly, if they don't actually chip them outright. I'm going to try to find a cheap used planer I can use to quickly clean off the rough, dirty surfaces without having to worry too much about every tiny bit of metal - there are really a lot of nails, and a lot of them don't want to go anywhere.
Anyway, I've had some of this stuff sitting around for months, and between the water, the nails, and the rough condition, it would have been impossible to just start making fancy furniture out of any of it. Meanwhile, though, I'd decided months ago that I needed to get rid of my old bed and get a loft bed. I could buy a used ikea contraption for cheap, but have you ever seen those things? I thought it would be much more fun (and much nicer in the end) to try to make one from some of this wood. I wouldn't need to remove every nail or try to make any of the boards perfectly straight or make any fancy joinery because I'll inevitably be moving at some point and so anything I have of that size has to be able to be dismantled to the point where it will fit through a door and into a truck.
Most of you have seen my room. It's not really small. You're probably wondering why I'd feel the need to have a loft bed in the first place. When you get to the pictures below, note the insane amount of stuff still cluttering up the place even after the SS Queen Size has been removed. That's just how it is.
I thought for weeks and weeks about how to make this happen, and of course I went from imagining all kinds of mortise and tenon timberframing style fancypants stuff (highly impractical at this point) to just throwing a shitload of drywall screws into it all (quick and dirty). I caved because I knew that if I tried to go the fancy route, it'd be a long, long time before I got anywhere with it, the wood wasn't really ready for that anyway, it would make moving difficult, and I really just needed a new bed asap. The old one was too soft and creaky and was making all my old joints ache. So I borrowed some cordless tools from work, bought a box of 4" drywall screws, and started hacking away.
The frame was supposed to be easy; holding up boards longer than I am tall, trying to keep them level and flat against each other with one hand and maybe a knee while trying to push a 3 or 4 inch long screw into the end with the other hand wasn't really that easy. I did have to reposition things a couple of times and I definitely plunged the screwgun into my thumb at the end of the first night out of laziness and exhaustion. It's fine- I'll just need a bandaid on it for a few months. In the end, though, I got it square and level enough to feel comfortable with.None of these boards are actually flat or straight, but considering how old and abused they are, they're pretty damned close. Those slats in the second picture are mostly spalted maple that I already had sitting around that I did make sure to plane down so this thing wouldn't be shedding too much dust for a billion years.
I have plenty of boards that aren't in very good shape that were fine for a project like this but not necessarily for real deal furniture. I didn't have them all at home, though. And I'm a tough guy, as well, so I figured 3 steps or rungs to climb would be plenty. the top rung is 64" from the ground: my height. It feels fine climbing up- climbing down is another story. Especially for someone with short legs. Especially also at 4 am when I have to pee and can barely walk as it is. We'll see whether another gets added later- I may have to fall flat on my ass in the middle of the night before I'm convinced.
This stuff was roughsawn 200 years ago and hasn't been cleaned or touched really in any way since then, so when I started shuffling these things around in my room back in the fall, they shed dust almost constantly. Between that and the cat hair that had been building up in my absence over the past couple of years, it was nasty in here. Even more motivation to get this thing done. The other half of the reason I had thought to build this thing was to keep the cat out. The cat hair was really irritating to some people, myself included.
Unfortunately, months later, though this stuff had finally dried out a bit, it was still filthy. I did chisel off a lot which created an interesting surface on the sides but was too labor intensive for the whole thing - in a fit of insanity I thought I could save some time by bringing an orbital sander from work and using that for the shelf up top, if nothing else. Well, I did that for about 5 minutes, and it created such a thick cloud of nasty dust in here that I had to stop. I knew that might happen, but I had to try. Plan B was to put a relatively thick coat of polyurethane on the surfaces I needed dustless and smooth enough to use but couldn't hand sand.
This picture is pre poly. It looks odd from such a foreshortened view, but I had to make it wide enough to reach the wall from the outside rail to secure the whole thing. To make that happen, the 3rd board had to be tossed in there for width, and a 4th runs underneath against the wall- what you can't really see in this photo is that the shelf runs the entire length of the bed. It's nice- plenty of shelf space for all those things I need at 4 am on a school night - like bandaids and advil for when I fall on my ass because there aren't enough rungs to climb down on. 
After I got it all together and went out and got a futon mattress (I sleep much better on them than regular mattresses!) I still had a bunch of stuff all over the place and everything had a thick coating of grayish-green dust on it, but there was already more space in here. So I moved the drawing table in from the living room. It wasn't bad where it was, and for whatever reason my roommates aren't big on living rooms anyway, but it kind of cluttered it up out there so I dragged it in. Maybe I'll use it more often now.
I can stand up underneath- the slats are about 67" from the ground - but I definitely bump my head on that middle rail all the time. Small price to pay for the tree fort/jungle gym I never had when I was a kid.
See how tall that ladder is?
posted by dirty bird at
5:59 PM
4 Comments
