How to Build a Bed With Stock Cabinets
For people struggling to find more storage space in their homes, a bed with storage built right in can be a wonderful solution. If this sounds like the perfect option for you, but you don't feel that you have the ability to create drawers and cupboards from scratch, you can use stock cabinets to give yourself a head start on the project.
Things You'll Need:
- Measuring tape
- Seven 2-by-4 pieces of wood.
- Screws
- Screw gun
- Carpenter pencil
- Cabinets
- "L" brackets
- Gather your bed measurements. A standard twin mattress is 39 inches by 75 inches. A full size mattress is 54 inches by 75 inches.
- Find a cabinet style you like and think about whether you want to have drawers, cabinets with doors or a combination of the two in your bed. For twin size beds, you may want to look at a combination of upper and lower cabinets. Placing 12-inch deep lower cabinets and 24 inch deep upper cabinets back to back allows you to have a 36 inch wide main platform to build your bed on.
- Build a mattress size frame on top of the cabinets with four of your 2-by-4 pieces of wood. Use the three remaining pieces as evenly spaced supports inside the frame. They will help support the mattress and will keep the stress of holding it up off of the cupboards. You may want to also use "L" braces to strengthen the corners of the frame.
- Place the box spring and mattress on top of the frame. If you do not have a box spring, you will want to use a piece of half-inch thick plywood on top of the frame to provide support for the mattress.