Plan B

Master Cabin Bed

Im working on the bed in the master cabin, and I feel as if Im making some good progress.

The face frames for the drawers ( 12 drawers) is complete as is the panel foot board. I used plywood for the center partition on the bed so Id have a place to hang the drawer guide off of. I framed the mattress support out of 1 3/4" stock using pocket screws. While the bed is becoming a stout piece of furniture, everything about the bed is modular and able to be taken apart in relatively large pieces. I could probably dis-assemble the whole thing in about 1/2 of an hour.

The mattress support and bed rail are cantilever over the chest of drawers by about 4". This has proven to be a nice detail as it lets you get right against the bed while not having your toes hit the drawers. It just makes the room feel more comfortable. The cantilever also made the bed/drawers attachment much easier along with fabricating the radius. Because I now have wires in the head board, it would not be too difficult to incorporate some small LED lights in the cantilever to illuminate the drawers if the lighting needed to be improved to see into the drawers.

The outside rail for the bed finished out at 5" tall. I used pocket screws to assemble the two bent laminated pieces to the rail sections and Im extremely happy with how the joints look. Ignoring the difference in the grain, one would be hard pressed to see the joint itself. I used three pocket screws per joint, and I also applied a little glue to each piece. The bed rail is extremely rigid, and while one would have to be careful if it ever had to be removed, the piece would fit through either the engine room door, or the door to the head and into the guest cabin.

I held the bed rail down 3/4 " below the mattress support framing. Ive always figured on using an 8" foam mattress, but sitting on the rail, and looking at how other things are fitting together, I could probably get away with a 6" tall mattress.

I incorporated a book shelf of sorts into the head board, along with a place to have two LED reading lights. Instead of robbing the natural light from the port lights, we decided to not have a top shelf on the book case/headboard so light would have an easier time getting past the book case. I fabricated a fiddle to the base of the book case, and one rail across the front to hold in whatever gets put on the shelf. The reading lights, with their 3" base, will fit between the fiddle and the rail.

The reading lights were originally going to be installed on the hull liner above the book case shelf. I ordered some lights with a long flexible neck, and after putting them up on the liner, I felt that the looked like crap. I scrapped that design, and had to come up with a better location. Putting the lights on the head board would have made them too close to the pillow, so I built three mini columns for a place to install the lights. The mini columns turned into a support bracket for the book case rail, so this is how the book case came to be. I had to fix my screw up with the wire location, so I cut a dado in some stock, and made a wire chase that I screwed to the hull liner. The wood wire chases look OK, and was a much better alternative to removing the hull liner and pulling new wire.

Building of all the drawers that will reside in the master cabin is the next item on the to do list.