Build Log: Bed Enhancements
When I built the floating bedframe for our king bed a few years ago, I knew I cut some corners on the final steps (the headboard and the floating night stands). The original plan was to use the bed for a bit and then make changes to address any issues I had with it. Fast foward a few years and I was itching for a ‘quick’ little project to tackle as the weather gets cooler.
Quick Links
Where we started
Overall, my bedframe has been great:
Using glue (where practical) means that it hasn’t creaked at all in the last three years
Almost surprisingly, the cheap tablet mount still works great
Increasing the size of the sub-frame (and/or the overall weight increase) means that we haven’t over-cantilevered the bedframe
A bunch of squishies have taken over…
Goals and Objectives
I have three broad aspects I wanted to tackle:
I wanted to find a nicer way to mount (and charge) our phones (and watches), specifically without having them sprawled on the nightstand — which inevitably leads to knocking them onto the floor
I wanted to ‘clean things up’ a bit more so that I could blindly schedule a robovac to regularly clean the room. This means that I would have to find a solution for the various cables spilling out from the sides of the bed as well as our super lightweight garbage cans that would get knocked over
I wanted to revisit storage; to take a step back and look at how we were using the night tables and see about improving things
I didn’t want this to be a huge sprawling enhancement project and I mostly wanted to work within whatever materials I happened to have on hand where possible. I also had to make sure the bed was “reasonably” bed-worthy each night, so I had to tackle things piecemeal.
Rough Design
I didn’t really enter this with a specific plan since I had forgotten the exact state of the headboard and nightstands that I had built. I knew that I had cut some corners when rushing through the final steps when making it, but I wasn’t sure how much I could reuse.
At the start of the project, my biggest concern was renconciling the nightstands and the garbage:
I wanted to keep with floating nightstands — and I wanted to keep their top-surface roughly where they were (altitude-wise)
I wanted to get the garbage off the floor
The problem is that I naturally gravitated towards keeping the gargbage can directly below the night stands. So getting the garbage off the ground whilst keeping the nightstands mostly where they were would be impossible (or at the least, be very challenging) as they would intersect each other.
I did briefly consider something like a Yamazaki side-table-trash can (either buying it or building something similar) - this would allow me to still toss things in the garbage whilst keeping the night table roughly in the same place.
I decided that I would start by adding some storage cubbies behind the headboard: this would allow me to migrate all but the alarm-clocks off the nightands and I would tackle this problem when I got to it.
Step 1 - Phone mount
We’ve had magnetic phone holders in our cars for awhile now without issue and I’ve rigged up a few DIY phone mounts using magnets and plywood in the past, so had the idea of adding a sliding magnetic phone mount to the headboard. This was a super easy enhancement: you have quite a bit of adjustability left-right but also up-down by changing which gap to thread the phone mount through.
Parts used:
130lb rare earth magnet. Using a 1-1/4” forstner bit, I set the drill press for 5/16” depth for a flush fit
1/4-20 thru-hole star knob (alternatively 1/4-20 washered wingnuts)
1/4-20 x 2-1/2 machine screw. I set the machine threw into a threaded insert to keep it bound to the plywood — one less moving part
Step 2 - Disassemble the headboard
This was the proverbial ‘point of no return’: I removed the headboard and the attached nightstands and would go down the path of seeing how much of it was built reasonably-well versus what I would have rebuild/redesign. Thankfully, the main framing element, I built reasonably well so I didn’t have to revisit it.
I didn’t stop to take pictures, but thist first night I spent swapping out the old RGB strips for a WLED-compatible 5m strip. While I certainly wasn’t unhappy with the old strip, the new strip is definitely smoother (60leds/m versus 30leds/m) and can go way brighter if I choose to. The biggest advantage is running locally off my home network and not being at the mercy of cloud connectivity and the latency that comes with that.
New WLED-compatible strips, viewed from far-away
New WLED-compatible strips, viewed from ‘over the bed’
I debated putting the new strips into channels and diffusers but opted not to since I didn’t really want to use up the few channels and diffusers I had left. The end result, at least in my bedroom and application, is perfectly fine without it. For the previous RGB strips, I had preinstalled clips, so I was able to reuse those.
Parts used
WLED. I had previous experience with this strip specifically when making the LED slat wall for Skype Station
Controller. This controller generally ‘just works’ — there are some quirks around updating the firmware on it and then having it take it’s sweet time before the webserver stops timing out, but once things are all done, the controller is generally reliable
5m RGB strip (60led/m). The density here is perfect for by application and I was able to wrap the three visible sides of the subframe with just the one strip
10A max power supply. No complaints, this ‘just works’
Step 3 - Cubby storage
I vaguely recalled seeing some kind of ‘storage cubby behind the headboard’ in the past (future me tells me it is most likely based on the IKEA BIMNES or similar). Since I plan to have slats on my headboard, I needed a system that would work with that. I happened to have some leftover double-laminated plywood (ironically a carry-over from my very first bedframe build) so I was able to use this to make extra heavy duty cubbies. At this point, my I had the following ‘rough plan’ (totally not to scale)
My rough vision for the headboard (at this time)
At this phase in the process I was mostly working with whatever scrap and leftover materials I had on hand. The idea was that I would have a cubby on each side that butted up against the vertical 2x4 and was solidly bolted to the mounting frame. With the top and bottom of the cubby box being made of double-laminated ply, this was beefy enough that I could then consider structurally mounting things to that — perhaps a cantilevered nightstand? To be determined…
In the middle, I wanted to add a panel so that nothing could really fall behind the bed and then perpendicular to that panel, I would attach a small shelf. The original intent for this shelf was to place books, kindles, tablet, flashlight etc. I would provide a way to manage cables to/from this shelf and provide power. Implementation to be determined…
But first, to build those cubbies.
Overall this phase is pretty low-drama and I eventually noticed that the gap between the cubby and the 2x4 was because I didn’t fully notch out the top and bottom (this was quickly corrected with an OMT).
Step 4 - Center divider
Was making fairly good progress here and I got lucky as I happened to have a perfectly sized piece of OSB I could use for the divider. I debated not using this as there would be a visual change going from plywood to OSB but it felt silly not to take advantage of this material that I would otherwise never use for anything else.
Generally speaking, this isn’t a huge (aesthetic) deal I suppose — I was more concerned about the texture and spent quite some time absolutely sanding it down to 220-grit.
Step 5 - Adding the switch
It was awesome that the original bed had switches to control lights but it was a bit annoying to awkwardly reach for the switch while in bed. Also — locating the switch where it was before was a constraint (or consequence, I’m not sure) of having the nightstands the way I did them originally. This was an opportunity to have a ‘clean slate’ and revisit things entirely.
I opted to put the switch in the center panel: since it’s located past the pillows, in theory, it shouldn’t be accidentally triggered and moving the switches there removes one more need for some kind of extension or night table. I briefly debated putting the switch on the side of the bed but I was afraid it would interfere with where the nightstand/garbage would go - having it on the center panel is so much cleaner as well.
I’ve stopped at adding just the switch — the light box remains a dangling tag-along that I’ll need to mount to the slats — once I figure out what my plan is for the slats. At this point in time, the plan is:
The latest plan at the time…
At this phase of the build, I’m starting to consider the slats; I really want to remake the slats, but:
[Pro] I can finally address the fact that when I made the bed originally, I sent screws in through the front (rather than from behind)
[Pro] By re-cutting the slats, I have a bit more control over the sizing of the slats to better fit the space
[Con] That seems like a silly waste of materials
[Con] While it’s not challenging to do, it requires sinking more time into this mini-project that I really just want to be done and over with
[Con] I really don’t want to spend the time to cut the relief needed to mount the lamps
I ultimately decided to go with the existing slats and ‘just see how it looks’ — I can always re-cut the slats, but for now, I wanted to press forward.
Step 6 - Adding the slats
This step gets a bit tricky (even though there’s not much to show for it) as I have to juggle both the unwieldy slats, figure out the spacing and take into consideration the center opening — I don’t want the slats to really intrude into that space, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to access it easily. The plan was to start from the top, with the upper soundbar shelf and then work my way down, using shims to maintain a consistent gap between slats. My wife was awesome and helped handle the slats and spacing while I waffled around and then attached them
Getting the top shelf and then the top slat as properly as I could is super important: everything else registers off it! I ended up running pocket holes from the double-laminated top shelf into the topmost slat just to tie everything together tightly. We used plastic shims in order to dial in the gap between the slats; there were two things to keep in mind:
The gap had to be big enough for the magnetic phone holders to slide between
I had intended to use the gap in the slats as a faux tissue dispenser — the gap in front of the tissue box needed to accomodate that
From a distance it’s not as apparent, but the gap for the tissues is slightly bigger. I also took the time to finish mounting the lamps to the slats.
Step 7 - Finishing touches
This last section was a seemingly endless punchlist of little things to do and add. I spent the most amount of time doing cable management for all of the wires behind the bed, of which there are a ton:
2x for integrated power bars (on the side of the 2x6 mounting frame)
2x bed lamps on switches
1x for USB ports on the visual shield
2x for the sunrise alarm clock and Google Nest Mini
1x for heated blanket
1x bed motion lights
1x for WLED
2x for soundbar & subwoofer
Parts used:
Wall mounted garbage can. I had previously used this garbage can when making my Coffee & Tea bar and it worked great there
4-port powered USB hub. I went with a rectangle-style rather than the more common (and less annoying to install) round-style because I wanted a more low-profile unit
Cheap tablet mount. Paired with a DIY magnetic mount, this works great
Subbeam heated blanket. With the design of the bedframe, it’s super easy to just leave the wires and controller preinstalled and disconnect the power during off season
Philips 3520 sunlight alarm. I bought this years ago to act as a silent alarm clock and it’s still kicking
Power. I run all of the electronics on the bed through a UPS that I have under the bed. The bedframe and all of the electronics sits on a extra large rug which means that all of the wiring ‘travels together’ (when I pull the bed off the wall) and I only have to worry about a single power cord (from the UPS to the wall)
Cyberpower ST900U standby UPS. Still going strong, this keeps everything connected running in the event of a power blip
Long power bar. This allows me to widely space everything out and keep things organized. While the UPS can handle the load, I opted to keep the heated blanket on surge-only — if there’s a power outage, losing bed-heat is not the end of the world.
Milestone
Overall, the (original) bedframe has been great and hasn’t given me any major grief and while this set of small enhancements addresses a few small issues I’ve discovered along the way, truthfully, the primary motivator was to ‘get stuff off the ground’ so that I can regularly (and blindly) schedule robovac to do it’s thing.
The various enhancements have the end result of entirely removing the need for having night tables and with that out of the way, getting the garbage off the ground was a nobrainer. A bit of cable management later and the space is robovac friendly. I ultimately decided to cluster all the ‘stuff’ in one area and hopefully the robovac just treats that area as a obstructed blob instead of working it’s way in there and getting stuck (if that’s the case, I can set a no-go zone).
I did a trial run of the robovac (without doing any prep- or tidying beforehand) and it ran successfully without snagging onto anything. It’s time for the residents to move back in…
Happy return for the squishies
For a ‘quick’ project that was mostly dictated by what materials I had on hand, this was pretty successful. Getting rid of the nightstands and pushing everything ‘inward’ visually opens up the room a bit more as well.
As for the robovac that kicked this all off? I have a Eufy L60 SES assigned to upstairs duties.
Mixups, surprises and lessons learned
The biggest takeaway here is ‘spend the time the first time to do things right’. When I rushed through this originally, I knew that it was a bad idea to send screws through the front of the slats (doubly so, since I did things properly on my first bed). Even with relatively color-matched screws, it still bothers me. To a degree, the OSB bothers me a bit but much less so, ha!
I do slightly regret putting the pocketholes on the visible face of the cubbies as that added a bit more (unnecessary) work to plug them up — spending a few more minutes thinking about this probably could have prevented this.
Floating King Bed Frame
My original build log for the floating bed that this project builds upon.
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