I was planning on just doing nothing yesterday, because it was my last day off before going back to teaching, but I couldn’t stop. I had to do the trimwork.
All along, I intended to copy the trim around the door and windows of the room. It’s a pretty standard old house trim: grooved borders, and corner blocks with circles. While I couldn’t find an exact match, I did find something that is complementary. One of the stores I went to had everything I needed, so I got it all and went home. But I forgot to get smaller nails, so I had to go back out. I was mad. I went to another store because it was closer. While I was there, I went to look at their trim and saw that they had nicer corner blocks. What was originally an angry trip turned into a blessing. I once wondered if I should thank God for such small, silly things. I don’t wonder any more (James 1:17).
There were no directions for putting the trim on, so I was making it up as I went along, but I think I did a pretty good job. I used glue and finishing nails. Here are some befores and afters:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
I even found some nice molding for the corners. I think the cabinet looks so much better with the trim. It looks like it belongs in the room. Here’s a full picture of the cabinet. You can see the similar trim around the door to the room in this picture.
The murphy bed is assembled! Woo hoo! After all the scary and meticulous measuring, it was a fairly easy and stress-free process to put all the parts together. My assembly went according to the instructions on the DVD. The only snags were caused by my house being so old.
One difficulty was that the floor and walls are not square. I had to shim the bottom of the cabinet.
Another difficulty was in finding the studs in my walls. I have plaster over lathe. I wasn’t sure an electronic stud-sensor would work. I asked the guy at the store, and he talked for quite a while with me (he was quite a talker). He said when he used a stud-sensor, he would confirm by drilling into the wall and seeing if the drill hit any resistance. I am so glad he gave me that tip. I used his trick. It gave me such peace of mind. I know for sure my cabinet is attached to the wall-studs and will not be crashing down on anyone.
I still have to finish the bed frame, attach some trimwork, and paint the cabinet, but the moving parts all function properly. Yay!
CLOSED:
OPEN:
After yesterday’s work, I have constructed all the pieces of the murphy bed! Yay! Now, I need to prepare the wall (by removing the baseboard) and prepare the floor (by removing my experiment with laminate flooring) and assemble the parts. I’m not going to get to the trimwork and painting before Monday, so those things will have to wait until next weekend (or whenever).
Also after yesterday’s work, I am the proud owner of several exotic and expensive drill bits.
I bought this drill bit:
To drill this hole:
But the fancy bit kept splitting the wood and seizing up, so I went with a regular one inch hole-borer bit. Wasted money. Dang. I drilled two one inch holes for the latches that keep the bed locked in an “up” position:
As I was installing hardware into the side panels, the instructions told me to drill a 5/8 inch hole. My drill bit set went up to 1/4 inch, but that wasn’t big enough. Off to the store. I thought I’d save money by getting a 5/8 inch rasp instead of a full-blown drill bit.
But it couldn’t get a hole deep enough for my purposes. More wasted money. Dang. Back to the store to get the other drill bit. After leaving my instructions on a store display and going home, then going back to the store to get them, I finally got back to work and got the side panels done:
I almost stopped then, but building the “header”, or top of the cabinet, was really easy. It was just gluing and drilling pilot holes and putting in nails and screws. It went very quickly.
I can’t decide if I want to spend my time prepping the room today, or shopping for a mattress. I’m so close to being almost finished!
It feels like I’m running out of steam. I seem to be getting less and less done. Yesterday I was going to start by mounting the door knockers on the bed legs. But I needed shorter screws than the ones I had. Off to Home Depot. I got two sizes. Neither of them worked. By then I only had two hours before it was time to Skype into my sister’s college class. Time enough to get other screws? Nah…
After Skyping, it was time to get back to work. But I had an oil change appointment in an hour and a half. Was there time to get the screws? No, I’d get them on the way back after the oil change.
So I started working at 5. Bible study was at 7. Not much time. But I did at least get the legs mounted. There were surprisingly few problems. I had to shim the hinges a little, but everything seems to be in good working order.
So here’s what the legs look like when the bed is in the “up” position.
Here is one leg up, one leg down, for comparison.
And here’s a closeup of a leg in the “open” position.
My work was delayed by indecision yesterday. The legs of the bed have handles that must be attached before the legs are installed. I had to decide what handles to get before I could go any further. I want the cabinet to look like something original to the house. I needed handles that had a traditional look, but I also like unusual. Traditional/unusual? I looked for hours before it came to me. I would use door knockers! Ha!
It was late afternoon by the time I got to work. Then some heart-stopping problems happened.
Problem one: For the locking mechanism, I had to cut holes in the face panels. Because of a funky setting on my fancy jigsaw, my cuts were a little wonky. Dang. But they’re covered by the bed leg panels, so it won’t show. (whew!)
Problem two: Here’s something that is implied in the instructions, but not said explicitly: The bed frame will not be exactly square. When you try to attach it to the face panels, it will be off. Alarmingly off.
But the directions describe how to methodically screw the face panels on, so that everything squares up. (whew!)
Problem three: The leg holes were supposed to match up with the bed frame struts, but one of them was off by one sixteenth of an inch. D’oh! I was almost going to cut the hole bigger, but wouldn’t it be better to shim? I searched the basement and found something that was exactly one sixteenth of an inch thick: a paint stirrer! (whew!)
