Back in high school when I redecorated my room I somehow convinced my parents to get me this beautiful
Claudio Rayes hand-wrought iron bed from Argentina. I've absolutely love it, but my parents have been looking for a bed frame for a while so I told them to take my bed. They have vaulted ceilings in their room and the bed looks great in there! My room looks much bigger too without such a large bed.
(Yes that is my childhood dollhouse. Barbie was living the life! It's way too pretty to put in storage!)
I originally thought that I would make a tufted headboard because I had seen all these people doing it on Pinterest and it looked pretty easy, but when I happened upon this beautiful mahogany bed on
Everything But The House (EBTH is auction-style like Ebay) this past spring I decided to go with it. It was a steal at only $90 and proceeds went to Habitat for Humanity which is awesome (I went on a Habitat spring break trip in college to Miami, FL and loved it - we were the "Shingle Ladies" aka roofers for the week).
(I forgot to take a before picture. This is the one they used on EBTH.)
It was overall a beautiful bed but it had some scratches and such, so we decided to strip and refinish it. By we, I mean my dad haha. He decided to start stripping it while I was studying (Pediatric inpatient hours were 6am-6pm and then of course I had to study after work so that left very little time for, well, anything. I really liked peds and I saw some really cool things but the hours were a little rough, especially right before the exam.) I started this project at the end of my 3rd year but with the craziness of board exams, away rotations and other 4th year things I didn't finish it until winter of 4th year.
So let's strip! We used the Klean Strip Premium Stripper (Strongest) which works in just 15 minutes per application. This stuff is pretty goopy and easy to brush on and according to my dad. It's easier to use than some others he's used in the past. (This is the same method, including the same stain, that I used for refinishing my
Walnut Bedside Table.)
Note: Use this in your garage or another well ventilated area because of the fumes and smell.
This is what it looks like with the stripper on. Just brush it on and leave it for 15 minutes.
After time is up, use a putty knife to scrape all of the goo off (yuck). He ended up doing two rounds of this for each surface (front and back of the headboard and footboard).
After it's scraped clean, you use the After Wash to get rid of any residual stripper.
Then wipe it all down with Mineral Spirits to get a clean slate before staining. You should wipe it down until your rag is clean (you aren't pulling any more stain out).
This is how it looks after 2 rounds of stripper, after-wash and mineral spirits.
Now it's time to stain! I wanted a stain that was more brown than red and ended up with this one from Rustoleum:
Here's an action shot! We liberally rubbed on the stain with an old T-shirt, let it sit for 2 minutes and then used another t-shirt to wipe off the excess. We let it dry and then flipped it over to do the other side.
As you can see, the back of the headboard was pine so it took the stain a bit differently than the mahogany on all the other surfaces.
The bed came with wheels but they were a bit rusty so I soaked them in diluted Spic and Span and then scrubbed them with an old toothbrush. I use Spic and Span to clean nearly all of my projects before painting.
I gave them a good spray with some Rustoleum spray paint in this fun metallic and they looked new again!
When I decided to buy this bed I didn't think much of the fact that it didn't come with sideboards. This fact turned out to be quite a problem because the single hook slots are super old-school and such railings are hard to come by these days. It took quite a while to figure out how to best solve this problem. Ultimately I decided to create matching mahogany side rails so that I can go without a bedskirt in the future if I'd like.
I bought two mahogany boards and had them cut to queen length. I then screwed four blocks to one side of each board to create rests for slats to support the mattress.
The two boards, despite both being mahogany, did not perfectly match in color so when I stained with the same stain as the bed they took the stain differently with one being more purple. I ended up applying the black cherry stain to both boards then I applied a medium brown stain I had around the house over that to take down the purple tone. You can see that layering stains allowed me to get the boards to match each other and the headboard and footboard.
I applied 2 coats of satin Polycrylic to all four pieces, lightly sanding with 400 grit sandpaper in between coats. It looked so nice after the Poly dried!
After lots of investigation the best option for attaching the rails to the head and footboard seemed to be using this hardware:
I hit them with 2 coats of the same spray paint as above to give them more of a finished look.
I attached these pieces of hardware so the rails could be attached to the headboard and footboard. All that was left was to place some slats and make the bed!
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