Sawdust on the Floor

I don’t know how things work around your home, but in ours things just seem to evolve from a simple idea to a major project. What started out as a simple mission to buy a new bed for us, turned into several woodworking projects for me. Our old bed was a standard king size bed, with a curved headboard and foot board. Both of which were very nice, so our intent was to buy the same size bed, allowing us the reuse the head and foot board. Yeah, you guessed it, we ended up buying what the sales person called a” California King”, which is just a bit wider then the standard king.

When the new bed arrived, I tried to re use the headboard, only find out that the hardware to use a standard headboard was an option that we hadn’t purchased. Thinking back, I don’t recall the sales person mentioning this. Oh well. So for the time being we just used the bed with out a head or foot board, while we tried to figure out what we really wanted to do. Purchase the hardware kit, or maybe purchase a different headboard that actually would fit the dimensions of the new bed.

Around this same time, we received a catalog that totally changed the direction that this project was heading. In the catalog were this set of wall mounted wall sconces, with a scissor action that allowed you to change the position of the lamp. Mounted on the wall next to the bed, these would have been perfect for us, as we both like to read in bed at night. We could move the lamp closer when reading, then collapse it and push it away when we were ready for bed. Only problem, I really hated the look of the power cord hanging out of the bottom of the lamp. While the lamps were not cheap, the hanging cord made them appear that way, at least in my mind.

One obvious answer would have been to modify the lamps to be used as standard wall mounted sconces. But that would have meant tearing into the wall behind the bed to mount electrical boxes for the sconces and a switch to control them. Something that I am capable of doing, but really didn’t want to get into that for several reasons. One if we hard wired sconces, then the location of the bed couldn’t ever be changed, the other reason is that I didn’t want to deal with the sheet rock work and possible repainting that the work could entail.

That’s when I had what I jokingly call ” an epiphany” , my wife now cringes when I say that. But my idea was, What if we could find a way to mount the lights to the headboard, instead of the wall. And if we could find a way to hide the cord in the posts of the headboard, another issue would be corrected. The original colonial headboard that we had, simply couldn’t be used for this, as the posts were only 3″ square. So we set off looking for a headboard that would allow us to mount the lamps to them.

A frustrating day at the traditional furniture stores revealed some interesting ideas that really looked great, but being a woodworker I couldn’t part with good money for particle board and laminate. A trip to the local unfinished wood stores had even less, no ideas and even less quality. So that night over a glass of wine we discussed our options. We had found a headboard at one of the local furniture stores that featured a headboard with large corner posts, about 6″ square. Suspended between these post was the actual headboard. This particular one had the headboard area covered in a leather like material. We liked the posts, hated the leather covered center area. The totally covered center piece made the headboard seem way too large, rather over bearing. While our original colonial headboard had spindles that we liked, the posts were too small. What we were looking for was a compromise between the two.

Maybe it was the wine, or maybe the woodworker in me, but some how we decided that I would take the best of both designs and make a customer headboard that featured big corner posts, suspended between the posts, the headboard area would feature spindles of some kind. Also mounted on each post would be the two lamps that we really liked.

So if your keeping score, our bed wore out so we bought a new one. It was a different size then the original one, so we had to get a new headboard. Before we found the headboard, we found some lamps that we wanted to incorporate into the headboard. So we went looking for a headboard that was made of real wood, that could be modified to accept the lamps and that it fit into our decorating ideas. Some how this all translated into me making the headboard.

Because so much of my work has been done in oak, we wanted to try something different this time. After a lot of discussions, we settled on the idea of making the headboard out of cherry. We really love the rich colors that cherry produces. While I was in the shop trying to decide how much cherry I had to buy, I remembered a large pile of my pallet lumber that I had rescued from a flooring store’s loading dock. A lot of this wood I have been unable to identify, I figure it’s some where between cherry and mahogany. Some of it had brown hues, whiles others displayed rich red tones. But here was the neat part, it was beautifully figured wood, I had plenty of it, it looked really nice next to cherry and the best part, I got it all for nothing other then a couple hours worth of my time. So it was decided that our headboard would be made of a combination of newly purchased cherry and the unidentified cherry/mahogany/rosewood/?????.

So the next step was to get the lamps on order. I wanted them on hand before I started actually making the headboard, in case my idea for mounting the lamps was not feasible. I could just see me getting everything ready then order the lamps only to not have them fit as I planned. I have done things like that in the past, so I have learned to be patient and have all the pieces on hand before I start. Good thing I waited. The lamps arrived in great shape, and were just what I wanted. The only issue was that because the way that the mounting hardware for the lamps was designed, I would have to mount an electrical box inside the corner posts to provide a safe installation of the lamps. I hadn’t planned on that but it really wasn’t that big of a deal. Just one more detail to take care of.

So now that you know how I got here and what’s ahead, how about joining me next time when we talk about the actual construction of the headboard. This soon got a lot more complicated then I had figured in the first place. Somehow that seems to happen to me quite a bit. Oh well. See you next time.

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