My father, alas no longer with us started the tradition of building beds for the family, and when he couldn’t do it any longer I carried on. I don’t quite know how the tradition started, I cant pretend its because we were poor, or needed  to save money, you can probably buy a bed base from a chain store for the cost of the wood of one of these, but having said that a chain store bed wouldn’t last like one of his. My dearly beloved and I still sleep on a bed he made for us as a wedding present and we have been married for 30 years.

I took over 20 years ago, and the demand goes in waves as the family changes. I started off making simple beds for children moving out of cots. As they became teenagers, style became an issue, so there was the French Day bed, or the one on stilts with a desk underneath, which If I remember correctly had purple rope light underneath, you couldn’t see anything by it but oh so cool.

Now its time to make another, as we reach a stage where the family starts to spread its wings, but economics is forcing a design change. My fathers original design relied on solid wood, glue and screws, and once assembled  wasn’t designed to move. It assumes you buy a house and stay there for 20 years. But that’s not how most young people starting out now live. In England where we live and I am sure in many other places around the world its Generation Rent. You cant afford to buy, and so you rent, which means packing up every 18 months or so and moving on, which doesn’t suit the family bed design, which wasn’t designed to come apart.

So today I have cut and milled the wood for a new flat pack double bed base design that theoretically can be disassembled in about 10 minutes using just a screw driver. Next weekend I will put it together for the first time and as usual there will be a video for the heritagecraft youtube channel. I am aiming to build it from scratch in two hours even allowing for delays caused by filming and for less than £50.

To see if it works Follow the blog or the you tube channel.