This pallet bed version is quite simple and was built quickly. With all needed stuff at hand, its a “should be done through the weekend” thing. Since i wanted to finish it over a weekend without having everything i wished for at hand, i had to deal with the stuff i had, that was fine, too. The compromises were made at spots invisible after the full assembly, though.
Starting Material: Two disposable pallets in “euro size” – 1,00×1,20m, lighter built than the “real” euro pallet. The bed/mattress is constructed to be contained by the pallet frame, rather than to lay on top of them. The pallets itself are “upside down”, means the usual upper surface of the pallet is the underlying base for the slatted frame. The downside of the pallet frames become the usable surfaces adjacent to the mattress.
First, two of the “feet” of the pallet must go. As seen in the diagram: the two red-bordered downside boards of the pallet are levered (keep them whole!) as well as the two central spacers between them and the upper side boards of the pallet on the center bar. Keep the spacers on the outer boards though, we’ll need those later. By the way: this is one of the moments where i’d like to have a crowbar.
Unused spacers should be kept – sometimes they break while assembling, you have always use for a spare one.
Take away some centimeters of wood above the spacers from the remaining bottom pallet board (the one unmarked in the scheme), so the two levered boards can be attached as shown with the green outlines. With the euro format (1,20×1,00) this fits quite well, otherwise you can cut off what overlaps. Alternatively to the “cut away some wood above the spacer”-method you can of course fix everything with metal fitting. While these boards are the latter surface of the bed frame, i preferred to have them plain and wood-only.
Before you remount the boards, you have reached the “maximum dissassemblage state” of the pallet. Thats the best time to clean and grind everything. If you wish, you can already apply the first layer of paint, you’ll never reach again all the cracks and angles as easy as now. I painted only once (and later in the process) at this project for the weather was quite unstable that weekend and i had limited time to let the paint dry outside (and limited space inside).
You have to make the shown disassembly/assembly twice: two pallets, two restructurings. The inner width between the pallet framings is subject to the usual imprecision of pallets – i had a 90cm-mattress what fits in for sure, i rather had to stuff things up a bit to prevent the mattress from sliding. Just use some spare boards on the inner frame for that, when needed. 100cm can get narrow, be careful when you use a broader mattress.
Now align the two pallets in the finally used distance/width for the mattress to fit in. Then place two 2m-boards/slats over the full length of the inner bottom. Those are the ground structure where the lath floor is fixed upon. So keep those straight and plain. Fix them at both pallets, when your bed is already “at site”. Fix them only at one pallet, when you have to move them yet – here, the ready assembled bed isn’t nearly as heavy and large as the king size bed, but still it’s quite unwieldy. Btw., you’ll see that i improvised here quite heavily. Nevertheless, everything is plain, i put a roll slatted frame on top as seen later and everything was straight and fine.
Provisional result is provisional. We still lack the base structure – in this case consisting of two longitudinal wooden beams and three crossbars. Shorter crossbars on the bottom, above them the long sidebars, on top the pallets – nearly all my projects have some ground clearance to keep the floor accessible with broom and/or vacuum cleaner. Believe me, its useful.
Well, now its time to do the painting, if you haven’t done so yet.
Final assembly: put some carpet strips below the cross beams of the substructure to avoid scratched floors. Fix the pallets to the longitudinal beams, roll in the roll duckboard (or your preferred lath floor structure) and fix it (wood screws). Insert mattress. Have a test nap.
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