Thursday, July 7, 2011

Countrystyle furniture: Shaker bed


My mother, who is my dollhouse-building-grandfather's daughter, couldn't help but notice me getting all crafty around the house I have, and decided to pick up hers aswell. Her house was made by the same man, it was my house when I was a small child though soon I was in need of a larger one. I passed this little one on to my mom because she wanted to try creating a dollhouse of her own.
But mom is starting from scratch, I inherited some old furniture from my older sister when I started mine so I had something to go on. Mom is a quilter, she does patchwork more than she does household chores. She wants her house to be entirely in a country/shaker style, so I proposed to make her a little country bed to start with.


You could probably guess it, but the bed was made out of 2 mm thick balsa wood. I was not difficult but it took some imagination and research to find a nice and doable country bed. I asked mom her preference and decided to make the one on top.































With the help of a bottlecap I drew the wavelike design of the bedframes and cut them out with a hobbyknife rather than a simple cutter, because as you can see those are much smaller, and thus more precise and accurate.
Then I made the posts of the bed out of 5 mm balsa. I cut them 5 mm wide so I had square posts that would look really realistic on the bed. Shaker furniture always has some kind of molding on its furniture legs though, so with a hobbyknife I extremely carefully molded that out of the balsa. Be very, very careful and patient, balsa is fragile and it's often better to scrape off a piece with glass paper than to cut it off brutally with a knife.














The mattress support is cut out of foam cardboard, because it will be invisible so I was reluctant to waste balsa on it. I cut out two sides for the bed to hide the cardboard entirely and make the bed a solid frame, glued everything together and there, I had the cutest little shaker bed for my mom:


You can paint it with a dark varnish to make the bed look old and antique

2 comments:

  1. I love it you're really good at this stuff!

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  2. This bed looks good too. I think it's a great bed. Thank you for the tutorials, I really appreciate them and am learning a lot along the way.

    Leilani

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