Beautiful Vintage Bed Makeover

Hey guys! Well I’m FINALLY working on a piece of furniture , it’s for Brie, but I am working on furniture!

So I purchased a full size vintage wood bed off of Craig’s List for $125, which is not a bad price but not super good either (I’ll explain later). I had a heck of a time finding a “nice” full sized bed that would work for my youngest daughter, so when I saw this one come up I immediately contacted the guy. However, I didn’t put the entire bed together (wood rails) to ensure stability (bad, bad Susan), I just made sure that the rails were the right ones by testing them in the slots. Anyway, when I got started on the bed and put it together it was SUPER wobbly! I don’t have the skills necessary to fix it, plus one of the wood rails already had a REALLY bad repair done to it, so I decided to look for an alternative. I found this great US company STL Beds that make metal replacement rails for vintage beds (among other things). After printing out their template to make sure it would work with my frame I purchased the No.1 Full Hook Side Rails. Hooking them up was pretty straightforward, you are not supposed to use wood slats, and let me tell you this bedframe is now T-I-G-H-T! It doesn’t move or wiggle or make any creaking sounds at all, which my daughter is thrilled about!

So this is the vintage bedframe I started with, great bones just needs a little love and a little less paint on it…

BEFORE

You could see a lot of wear on the rails.

Those two black marks on the right and left was some kind of hardcore stuff to get off…

More wear…

I used 3 products to clean and restore this bed, Murphy Oil Soap, Howard Restore-A-Finish and Howard Feed-N-Wax. Let me tell you I use the Murphy Oil soap all of the time to clean pieces I am going to paint or refinish. I smells great and cleans fabulously, perfect for cleaning out old smelly cabinets or drawers.

My process was to spray the oil soap on the wood, scrub (with the grain) the wood with 0000 steel wool then wipe it down with a cloth until clean. This took me about an hour because the bed was filthy and had a lot of wax buildup on it. Below you can see the grey streaks of wax still to remove.

After cleaning it I let it dry out overnight and then came back and applied the Restore-A-Finish according to the directions. The last step was to wax it with the Feed-N-Wax product according to it’s directions… BTW this stuff smells like oranges too! This is what it looked like after the Restore-A-Finish was applied.

The bed is all set up now in Brie’s finished room (which I will share soon), it turned out even more beautifully than I could have hoped. Just look at the gorgeous graining on the wood!

AFTER

Swoon worthy…

All of the rails now look great, not brand new, but great! Certainly it is not showing its age anymore! Yes, I know I need a bed skirt… priorities people

It seriously will be a piece that she can use for years to come and hopefully pass down to her kids!

I want to mention that a lot of the time you will see me painting pieces, but I don’t always. If the piece is salvageable and looks best in it’s original state then that is what I will do. I could NEVER had painted this piece after seeing the beautiful natural graining of this wood, but had I been unable to save the veneer then painting would have been an option.

I hope you enjoyed seeing the transformation of this bed and I cannot say enough about how happy I am with the new steel rails I purchased for it! Let me know what you think!

Thanks as always for stopping by…

Until next time!

Linking up to these parties:
Between Naps on the Porch, The Dedicated House, A Stroll Thru Life, Elizabeth and Co., Savvy Southern Style, From My Front Porch to Yours, Miss Mustard Seed, Chic on a Shoestring