For Christmas I made my wife a nice trivet and my son a set of cornhole boards. I wasn't sure what to make my daughter, but my wife suggested I make her a queen headboard so she could have a larger bed in her room. I wasn't able to find any good plans on the interwebs so I thought I'd share what I came up with here. So the next poor sap that decides to try this has a better starting point than I did. Here is the finished product completely loaded:
So the requirements for this were that it be a queen sized, because we had a queen bed unused in our spare room that I've been using for an office. And that it have a lot of storage for stuffed animals because my daughter wanted to sleep with her dog, but not give up her stuffed animal collection. So I built the bed book case and on top I built a smaller rack to hold her little bug eyed animal collections called 'Beanie Boos'.
I started with a couple images I found from googling bookcase beds and beanie boo storage.
I then took to google sketch up to try to get some dimensions and plans for the headboard. Here's what I ended up with
I ended up putting plywood on the front and back to make a storage box for her. I had to modify the lid design because I didn't get the sketchup dimensions quite right for the lids, so don't use the lid dimensions on this cut list. (Note: If I were to rebuild this I'd definitely make it in 3 pieces rather than 2. I'd do the base with storage a bit wider maybe 18" and then the top still out of 12" material. This thing was an absolute beast to move upstairs to my daughters room.)
I opted to cut everything out and pre-finish it prior to assembly. I was doing this in December and of course it turned cold so I ended up painting in my garage with space heaters keeping it warm enough for the paint to dry. The top book case part I used dowel construction and the bottom storage and top rack I used pocket screw joinery. The years spent selling cnc machinery and doing software demos really paid off on laying out all of those holes. I will say that I doubt I'd go that route again, its pretty hard to manually get all of the marks laid out and then drilled out properly. I without a doubt got lucky the hinge lengths were the only thing I got wrong on this.
Again this cut list doesn't have the right dimensions for the lids. All others are right and good no need to notch the lower dividers if you use hinges for lids.
Don't forget to cut some sort of arch or cut out for the sides. 4 feet will sit much nicer on any floor than a straight plank. I've made the mistake before on smaller book cases, don't make that one it's very easy to cut an arc out.
My family gives me much grief for hoarding things as well as 'racooning' items from our neighbors trash piles. I've mentioned a couple times I goofed the dimensions for the lids, but luckily I had these hinges I had literally bought about 10 years ago on clearance for pennies, that saved me from having to go buy hinges. I just went to my stash and pulled them out and cut new lids from my scrap pile.
By the time I got to the beanie boo storage rack I was pretty well done with careful planning and documenting my work. Basically I again when to my stash and used some 1x4 I grabbed from a neighbor's trash pile and cut the two shelves to 58.5" and the sides to I think 16" the goal was to have 7" clearance for the animals. Most are around 6" when I measured them in her room. I then cut some 1" strips to help hold them in place at 60". It turned out pretty well, by using the top of the bed as a shelf I got 3 levels without needing another long piece of 1x4.
I've attached my sketchup file. Someone that is better with the program than me might be able to clean it up, but even as it is I found it extremely helpful.
So the requirements for this were that it be a queen sized, because we had a queen bed unused in our spare room that I've been using for an office. And that it have a lot of storage for stuffed animals because my daughter wanted to sleep with her dog, but not give up her stuffed animal collection. So I built the bed book case and on top I built a smaller rack to hold her little bug eyed animal collections called 'Beanie Boos'.
I started with a couple images I found from googling bookcase beds and beanie boo storage.
I then took to google sketch up to try to get some dimensions and plans for the headboard. Here's what I ended up with
I ended up putting plywood on the front and back to make a storage box for her. I had to modify the lid design because I didn't get the sketchup dimensions quite right for the lids, so don't use the lid dimensions on this cut list. (Note: If I were to rebuild this I'd definitely make it in 3 pieces rather than 2. I'd do the base with storage a bit wider maybe 18" and then the top still out of 12" material. This thing was an absolute beast to move upstairs to my daughters room.)
I opted to cut everything out and pre-finish it prior to assembly. I was doing this in December and of course it turned cold so I ended up painting in my garage with space heaters keeping it warm enough for the paint to dry. The top book case part I used dowel construction and the bottom storage and top rack I used pocket screw joinery. The years spent selling cnc machinery and doing software demos really paid off on laying out all of those holes. I will say that I doubt I'd go that route again, its pretty hard to manually get all of the marks laid out and then drilled out properly. I without a doubt got lucky the hinge lengths were the only thing I got wrong on this.
Again this cut list doesn't have the right dimensions for the lids. All others are right and good no need to notch the lower dividers if you use hinges for lids.
Don't forget to cut some sort of arch or cut out for the sides. 4 feet will sit much nicer on any floor than a straight plank. I've made the mistake before on smaller book cases, don't make that one it's very easy to cut an arc out.
My family gives me much grief for hoarding things as well as 'racooning' items from our neighbors trash piles. I've mentioned a couple times I goofed the dimensions for the lids, but luckily I had these hinges I had literally bought about 10 years ago on clearance for pennies, that saved me from having to go buy hinges. I just went to my stash and pulled them out and cut new lids from my scrap pile.
By the time I got to the beanie boo storage rack I was pretty well done with careful planning and documenting my work. Basically I again when to my stash and used some 1x4 I grabbed from a neighbor's trash pile and cut the two shelves to 58.5" and the sides to I think 16" the goal was to have 7" clearance for the animals. Most are around 6" when I measured them in her room. I then cut some 1" strips to help hold them in place at 60". It turned out pretty well, by using the top of the bed as a shelf I got 3 levels without needing another long piece of 1x4.
I've attached my sketchup file. Someone that is better with the program than me might be able to clean it up, but even as it is I found it extremely helpful.
