Big Boy Bed!

I had been looking for a vintage wood headboard at garage sales all summer long and finally snagged a fantastic deal about a month ago.  I purchased a headboard and footboard for $1.  The only problem was that no support rails were included.  We stopped at a local Thrift Store a couple of days ago and found the needed rails for $10.  Hence, the late completion date even though my son's room has been painted for a month now.

My $1 bed find!

Steps to refinishing our vintage wood bed:

1. Find a bed (seemed like a long process for me, but paid off in cheapness!)
2. Sand bed to pull of smooth stain/varnish finish and make a decent surface to paint.
3. Prime bed.
4. Paint bed (this step will most likely need to occur more than once).
5. Put it all together!

Paint/Primer Application

Logan (sans shirt) likes to help!

Step 5 took us the longest amount of time after we realized that our existing bed rails would not work and that we needed to buy a different kind.  Then, we realized that our box spring was a little too wide.  Argh, but we decided to do without the box spring anyway so that the bed wouldn't be too high.  My husband made wood slat supports to act as the platform for the mattress and they fit perfectly in the rails.  Until...my husband testing it by sitting on the bed and the rails spread a bit, thereby dropping the newly created slats.  At that point he created additional support by using a threaded rod to pin the rails together at their midpoint.  We've got some highbrow engineering going on in this bed!

Everything now works perfectly and Logan spent an excited night barely sleeping on his big boy bed.