DIY Mid-Century Modern Inspired Sleigh Bed

TITLE: Mid Century Inspired Sleigh Bed

Skill Level: Intermediate

INSPIRATION:

It’s happened! It’s finally happened! We have gotten our mattress off the floor and back onto a bed frame again! Back in April 2018, I had the inspiration to rip apart our bedroom. I no longer loved our decor and since I have a husband who can MAKE ME FURNITURE, I started planning and pinning for our new “remodel”. My main inspiration came from a beautiful tall boy dresser we inherited from Kris’s Gram when she passed away a couple of years ago. It’s a gorgeous, true mid-century piece made from teak. I love that we can keep this piece of family history in our home. (We also have a few of her hand stitched embroidery pieces framed in our room. see if you can spot them in our build video.)

So with my main inspiration secured, I started to build my vision for the room around it. I knew I wanted a deep blue for a feature wall and wanted to use copper as our metal accent. The dark IKEA furniture definitely had to go, along with the electric fireplace that we NEVER used. we sold both the bedframe and fire place within a week! Excellent right?! Not, not excellent because designing and building a bed frame is a big project… especially when Kris likes to always challenge himself with each new build. Why couldn’t he just build a bed frame with right angles and be done with it? Because that’s not the way he rolls… Which I love. I am so proud of the furniture he makes us. It is always beautiful, functional and I love that he keeps pushing himself to learn new techniques. I can’t wait for the day he tackles a project with mortise and tenon joinery, if only to prove to me that is indeed an actual thing. Doesn’t it sound like a made up term?? I think so.

With the bedframe and fireplace gone, we now had room to move the tall boy into our room. My motivation factor was soaring! I painted the feature wall a beautiful deep royal blue. I was in love. I started sourcing out decor pieces from my favourite store: Goodwill. There are so many beautiful vintage pieces just waiting for new homes. Gold and brass are much easier to find, so the challenge for copper pieces made the hunt that much more thrilling. I also sourced out some copper piping from Home Depot for our curtain rods and am so happy with the way they turned out. I was also on the hunt for the perfect weaving to hang over our bed. I have found one that I am really happy with, but it’s still not quite perfect. I know exactly what I want and might have to just make it myself. If I do, I’ll post about it and share my process too, because sharing is caring.

Well, if you were counting you will have noticed that I am writing this post in March, and I started this bedroom project last April. Because I sold our bed frame so quickly, we have been sleeping with our mattress on the floor for almost a year! We also had some water damage over the summer, resulting in us needing to put new drywall in under the window… and yes, repainting the beautiful blue wall. We also needed to replace baseboards and do a lot of work to save our carpet. All that to say, this remodel has taken some time to complete, but I am over the freaking moon that our bedroom is finally finished and I really really love how it all turned out!

WOULD WE BUILD AGAIN?

We started designing the room around the tall boy dresser but I really feel like Kris’s bed frame has stolen the show. He make a mid century twist on a sleigh bed. The angles are perfect and the walnut pairs beautifully with the teak dresser. He filled any knots with black epoxy and it looks perfect. There isn’t a single thing I would change about this bed.

BUILD VIDEO:

Here’s Kris’ build video for you to see his process and to hopefully give you some inspiration to start your own build!

PLANS, PLANS, PLANS

Feeling inspired? You can purchase plans to build this bed frame! Click the link to get to our Shop. We also have other plans available for purchase. Have questions? Please email us! We love to connect with other makers and builders.

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