A shoe rack from an old pine bed

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sploo

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We had an old pine framed bed that was no longer required, but a look on eBay suggested the resale value was low.

Our current shoe storage solution is a mess (see below), and we need somewhere for our ever-growing small person to hang her coats.

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I had a bunch of varnished frame parts, and a stack of rails that supported the mattress:

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A bit of tinkering with Sketchup indicated that I could build something suitable if I formed some sheets from the existing parts:

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I cut the frame parts down, including resawing the longer square posts, and with a fair bit of glue and dominos, I had a set of parts of roughly the required size. I hand planed off as much of the old varnish as I could, before throwing them through the thickness planer (about 29mm resulting thickness):

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For various reasons I decided it would make more sense to do it as a "knock down" system - 10mm dominos to help align the parts, and threaded inserts to hold it together.

The top and bottom horizontal parts were made ~1mm oversize at each end, and after a dry fit with dominos I drilled the holes for the bolts and threaded inserts. I then trimmed the overhang with a router and rounded over the edges:

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Next I cross cut the mattress support slats. Some of the slats are slightly different widths (69-70mm) and I didn't want to plane them. It's not a problem visually, but referencing a pair of dominos from the edges would cause problems vs the holes I would cut into the carcase; so instead I made a simple jig from some of the bed frame scraps that fit over the end of a slat and allowed me to make two pencil marks of consistent spacing for the 6mm dominos:

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I then marked up the cutting positions for the dominos on the carcase, using the relevant piece of wood from my jig to ensure each pair of domino holes would be cut at the same spacing as all the slats (so it doesn't matter which slat ends up in which position). The distance from the bottom of the DF 700 base plate to the cutting bit is 15mm, so the lines drawn are 15mm below the desired domino centre line. The 'T' jig ensures the cuts are all on the same line, and there are pencil marks for each hole that I use to line up the centre mark on the bottom of the base plate (the jig is clamped down when cutting - not shown in the photos):

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A final "dry" fit outside. A few clamps, and the "persuader" (seen on the right of the shot) were required to coax that many domino'd parts together:

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I then dismantled the parts and used several coats of water based floor varnish, before then glueing the dominos into the ends of the slats and vertical carcase parts.

Finally, in place:

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I'll put some coat hooks on the upper slat on the right side of the frame for our aforementioned small person, but we haven't chosen them yet.
 
I like that, nice bit of upcycling there. Were you tempted to use the headboard to make doors for it?
 
Adam9453":2r5x1ime said:
I like that, nice bit of upcycling there.
Thanks.

Adam9453":2r5x1ime said:
Were you tempted to use the headboard to make doors for it?
No... because it is the headboard! Literally the only parts left are the curved section at the top of the headboard, the two short square posts and the turned knobs from the longer square posts.

I was so pushed for stock that in the end I cut out some pieces of paper to represent the parts and, with scissors, worked out if/how I could glue them together to create the stock I needed. The top and bottom horizontal parts are the sides of the bed, with the re-sawn long square posts glued on the back, then all planed down.

The depth of the unit is just over 26cm; dictated by the limits of wood I had available, and also to allow the front door and safety gate on the stair to open. It does mean that the heels of shoes will stick out, but they did on the old shoe rack so I wasn't that bothered. So, doors wouldn't have worked even if I'd have had the material - and there's usually cr*p piled in front of it in the hallway anyway :wink:

The width of the rails on the left side is approx 667mm as that allowed me to get two runs from a single rail without needing the ends (that had screw holes). The right side is ~900mm as that's what worked out with the required ~1650mm overall width. Obviously it would have been better to have the left side longer but I couldn't have done it with the available wood.

The total height is approx 870mm, as that matched the existing old unit, and that was just acceptable with the coats hanging above.
 
Adam9453":17mq4255 said:
I like that, nice bit of upcycling there.
I like it for the upcycling too, all of my projects include a piece that's either been upcycled or an offcut from another project and been laying around my store for some time.
 
No skills":6k6m29l3 said:
Good reuse of material, good work.

=D>
Thanks. There's literally just scraps left, so it was tight. But, given the cost of the extra materials and hardware was so low, it really only cost time.
 
A Well thought out design, you must have a house of light persons, as all the matress slats were bowed on the one I scrapped, just ended up with two side rails in the rack.
It is a good idea to collect as many Brownie points as possible, just before Christmas! and I would think you're there with that one!
Regards Rodders
 
blackrodd":clawekqv said:
A Well thought out design, you must have a house of light persons, as all the matress slats were bowed on the one I scrapped, just ended up with two side rails in the rack.
It is a good idea to collect as many Brownie points as possible, just before Christmas! and I would think you're there with that one!
Regards Rodders
There was a thin supporting rail down the length of the bed, with a short foot in the middle that rested against the floor, so I suspect that kept them reasonably flat. They had also been stored flat for a month or so, as it's taken that long for me to get round to building it!
 
Great work.

I had to take some stuff to the tip recently, and I was amazed with the stuff that people had thrown into the wood crusher*.

I was throwing away some rotten chipboard from old kitchen cabinets but there was all sorts or usable/reclaimable wood in there.

I did ask a lady to put some ply she was about to throw away into the boot of my car, but the guy said it wasn't allowed.

Buying new wood from local retailers is proving expensive, and needs to be worked anyway...after reading this thread I've found myself looking in skips as I walk past but no gems found yet.

*useable wood being thrown away wasn't the only thing that was grinding my gears...perfectly good children's toys thrown in the landfill skip, and even a big box full of crockery. Haven't people heard of charity shops?!?
 
focusonwood":bkh96bfh said:
I did ask a lady to put some ply she was about to throw away into the boot of my car, but the guy said it wasn't allowed.
Yea, that's the bit I find annoying. I often see stuff that would be useful, but you're not allowed to take it. Possibly some legal/insurance grey area maybe, though could just be jobsworth.
 
sploo":130270ii said:
focusonwood":130270ii said:
I did ask a lady to put some ply she was about to throw away into the boot of my car, but the guy said it wasn't allowed.
Yea, that's the bit I find annoying. I often see stuff that would be useful, but you're not allowed to take it. Possibly some legal/insurance grey area maybe, though could just be jobsworth.

I believe it's a legal issue. The tip is a private business, and anything dumped there becomes their property.
 
DTR":6hfnr0cg said:
sploo":6hfnr0cg said:
focusonwood":6hfnr0cg said:
I did ask a lady to put some ply she was about to throw away into the boot of my car, but the guy said it wasn't allowed.
Yea, that's the bit I find annoying. I often see stuff that would be useful, but you're not allowed to take it. Possibly some legal/insurance grey area maybe, though could just be jobsworth.

I believe it's a legal issue. The tip is a private business, and anything dumped there becomes their property.

I would have said until it touches the actual dumping point, i.e. it's still in her hands - what she does with it is her business.... or are they going to argue that anything inside the car - or the car itself becomes their property the moment it drives onto the site?

I would have asked the jobsworth to prove it was against policy that no public persons were allowed to transfer goods from one car to another, and explain exactly why.
 
John15":87djgr2a said:
Brilliant job Sploo - an old bed well recycled.
Thanks! The planed parts (i.e. everything except the rails) have already started to mellow down a bit and are matching the rails. It's looking much warmer and more at home in the hallway.

I've got a couple of bits of scraps and I'm thinking about building a tall but relatively thin box with a set of rails so we can vertically stack the small person's shoes on the left side of the right half - if that makes sense.


rafezetter":87djgr2a said:
DTR":87djgr2a said:
I believe it's a legal issue. The tip is a private business, and anything dumped there becomes their property.
I would have said until it touches the actual dumping point, i.e. it's still in her hands - what she does with it is her business.... or are they going to argue that anything inside the car - or the car itself becomes their property the moment it drives onto the site?

I would have asked the jobsworth to prove it was against policy that no public persons were allowed to transfer goods from one car to another, and explain exactly why.
To be fair I can see how it could get legally muddy (you're on private property, but at what point does it become "theirs"). The thing is though: do they actually make any money from stuff that's left? Given talk about recycling centres in my local area closing to save money I suspect not. I.e. it's almost a case that if people took 90% of the stuff that was left by others it'd probably save money.

My local place does sometimes separate out some "better" stuff and leave it on show. I've never asked but perhaps they let people take them (I've never seen any prices marked so I don't know if they ask for cash).

Matthias (the Woodgears guy) seems to acquire quite a lot of material from kerbs, but perhaps it's more common to leave such things out for collection in his area of Canada; it's not something I've seen people do here.
 
sploo":12zvz1v3 said:
focusonwood":12zvz1v3 said:
I did ask a lady to put some ply she was about to throw away into the boot of my car, but the guy said it wasn't allowed.
Yea, that's the bit I find annoying. I often see stuff that would be useful, but you're not allowed to take it. Possibly some legal/insurance grey area maybe, though could just be jobsworth.
It's a bit of a strange one this.
I have two tips local to me, both run by the council.
One says you cant take anything, even after offering the guy some beer tokens the answer was still no. And I've tried on more than one occasion with different staff.
The other one has an area in the middle where people can put things which they think may be of use to others. Anything in that area can be taken away by anyone. I asked, and that was the rules dictated to them.

So, two tips both run by the council, only a few miles apart, and completely different operation ideas. :roll:
 
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