Sweet Dreams Bed

I bought this bed SEVERAL months ago for my youngest daughter Brie (she’s 10) we are doing a little switcheroo with the girl’s bedrooms. She and her oldest sister (who has her own apartment at Radford University so don’t feel sorry for her please…) will be trading spaces.

Brie is getting a “new” (ok… so it’s new to her) bed… this one is so gorgeous with it’s tall headboard and footboard. I’m sure I could have refinished the wood easily, but that wasn’t the look I was going for… and it’s in excellent structural condition and the price was perfect for me at $75!

BEFORE

Brie already had a nightstand and chest I had refinished in Paris Grey and Old White Chalk Paint so I wanted the bed to coordinate with the rest of the furniture.

Here it is in the Grey/White combination, this picture was taken before I had waxed and buffed it…

Here it is setup in her new room… the green walls will eventually soon be painted a soft grey!

I hand painted (with a gold leaf pen) the phrase “sweet dreams” in French on the headboard… by the way if you are French and this phrase does NOT say that please let me know… as I used Google Translate when I probably should have phoned a Canadian friend

Love the gorgeous details on the footboard!

The bed still had all of its original wood wheels… what luck!

And now to the not so good part… when I went to attach the metal rails the seller gave me guess what… oh yeah… they didn’t fit!! So after a few choice words for the seller and my own stupidity (note to self… never buy a bed again without validating the rails fit!) I started working on a solution for the problem… this is what we ended up doing…

I purchased 2 poplar 6”x 6’ boards and 2 1”x2” boards and a wood bed rail kit (Rockler). We installed the bed rail kit using our Dremel tool in order to countersink the kit into the headboard and foot board legs… it took some time to do this part but it was not a difficult process. We (SAH and me) then cut the boards to length and I glued and screwed the 1×2’s to the bottom of the new wood rail in order to support the wood slats for the box springs & mattress. I then stained the rail, painted it in Old White, lightly distressed and waxed it and VIOLA! new bed rails…

Did I make that sound fast and simple… ‘cause it sounds that way to me… although it was not difficult it was a little nerve wracking countersinking the pieces into the vintage-OMG-please-don’t-screw-this-up bed… but it is totally “do-able” if you ever find yourself in a similar situation OR if you just want to replace metal rails with wood ones I say go for it!

We are pretty darn proud of our rail project

We have quite a ways to go in getting her room ready but we did take this area (closet / vanity / “dead” space)…

and make it look like this!

She’s going to have a super cool dressing room in this area when we are done… don’t worry I’ll keep you posted on it’s progress! Hubby keeps saying to me that I have “scope creep” and I sort of totally agree as I keep wanting to change just one more thing…

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Until next time…

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