Sarah's bed

Well, only abut 5 years after I started building a bed for my beautiful daughter Sarah, I've finally completed it.







One of the inducements we used to get our 8 year old to agree to go to sleep away camp for 7 weeks this summer was that we'd move her room from what was her nursery to the guest bedroom which was a good bit bigger. That had to include me finishing her bed, which I'd been working on for what seemed like forever. I came in just under the wire, as Sarah comes back from camp on Sunday 8/15. I put the final finishing touches on about 1 hour ago, the caps on the bed posts.

The bed is made from hard maple, following plans from "Plans Now". They were substantially modified, including dimensions of the headboard and foot board to accommodate the full size mattress set we bought her, as well as to substitute raised panels instead of vertical slats. Also, the plans call for cherry, but it's not a big stretch to go with maple instead. All the lumber was bought rough cut, and I milled it in my garage shop. Totally, I likely have about $350 invested in things like the lumber and hardware. Of course, I probably have spent about $10,000 in tools for the shop, including that SawStop** cabinet saw that cost ~$4000.



I've been woodworking for about 8 years, and this project took me the longest start to finish. I can't recall exactly when I started it, but it must have been in 2005. I actually built 2 other major pieces of furniture in between starting this and completing it, including our bathroom vanity (made from Walnut harvested from my inlaw's farm)




and an entertainment center in the basement (made from cherry).




Next project is likely to be bedroom nightstands for Sue and I.


**The nice thing about that saw is that it is designed to stop dead if it hits flesh, so it is impossible to amputate a finger or hand with it. It has a sensor in the arbor (the things that hold the saw blade) that detects conductance through the blade. If the conductance changes slightly due to the blade getting in contact with flesh (such as a finger), it fires a brake into the blade that stops it immediately. This is the only saw brand in the world that offers this safety technology. It's particularly important to me because I already partially amputated the tip of one of my fingers on my jointer (pronounced join-er; and seen diretly next to my cabinet saw...yes the long thing with the green base). Of course, that's a story for another post.