●Simplicity
In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit to not counting the 1x6 slats that support the queen size mattress in the count of 5 pieces for this recent commission. Otherwise, we have a one-piece foot board assembly with permanently attached ladder, a headboard assembly tall enough to allow sitting up in bed (for some), two 2x6 rails which drop into the foot and headboards on heavy duty bed rail fasteners and one lengthwise safety rail that also provides rigidity:
Assembly time is super quick, about 15 minutes. Add to that any needed shimming to level the legs and placing a couple of 1/4” lag bolts anywhere through the loft into wall studs. The concept in this design is to put all the assembly labor in the shop rather than at the site, thus no collection of boards, no bags of hardware, no hours of assembly time. If portability is of any concern or one enjoys working in the shop this design accommodates it nicely. Having spent two hours of my life in toto trying to distribute mattress slats evenly on a bed frame I decided to make this simple too by gluing spacers on top of the ledgers:
●Headroom
An unfortunate drawback in most loft designs is requiring adults to crouch when entering the space beneath. In order to allow most women and quite a few men to walk freely under my design I enlisted the help of staff member Derrick in my SketchUp first draft to establish the 5'9” clearance I was seeking:
Given the typical 8' ceiling height this is about the absolute maximum loft headroom after taking into account the mattress thickness and seated height for a child or short person on the mattress. Tall folks would need to read propped on their elbow. Note: the lower and upper clearances in this particular design were perfect for the granddaughter who commissioned it but may not be suitable in other circumstances.
●Safety
I found it disturbingly odd that both the commercial loft units I looked at as well as a DIY set of plans from Home Depot had no railings above the mattress level. This design does provide a 1x4 railing several inches above the mattress on all sides. This not only adds rigidity but prevents the inadvertent active sleeper roll out. The railings in the head and foot boards are fully mortised pine 1x4's, a pair for the headboard end. The 1x1 ledgers are glued, nailed and screwed into the rails. The first step of the ladder is 14 ½” from the floor, but all other steps including the upper cross beam and the safety rail are exactly 12” apart which will not disturb the proprioception of foot positioning without looking. The ladder is permanently attached for further safety.
●Joinery & Dimensions
The 2x6 foot board and headboard rails are attached to the L posts at each butt joint with four 7/16” dowels. Better have a helper when doing this glue-up! I used a standard four-hole Dowl-It jig for this purpose by removing all the bushings, leaving four 7/16” ID holes. Care was taken not to ruin the internal threads of the jig with the 7/16” brad point bit, and they came through just fine. The basic assembly is based on four fully mortised bed rail fasteners, though the Woodcraft set I used was not the best. The countersinks in the steel plate had to be increased to recess hardened 2½” #8 screws. The screw heads must not protrude above the plates. Also, the mortises were deepened about .02” greater than the plate thickness (see photo below) to ensure the fasteners would draw up tightly when dropped into place. I cut the mortises into the rail ends using a tenoning jig on a table saw which made this step quick and easy. Luckily a high shop ceiling allowed this since the 69 1/2" rail stands vertically on the saw.
Overall dimensions are 89” high at the top of the foot board post, 94” high at the top of the headboard post, 80” long and 58” wide. Less the thickness of the 2x6's this yields a well for a queen size mattress that has interior dimension of 77” long and 55” wide. This allows a space of 1"-2" around the mattress to facilitate making the bed. The tapering on the bottoms of the legs is not decorative! Obviously, the foot board and headboard assemblies cannot go through a door frame upright but can be moved about easily on their sides. The taper is just what is needed to allow the taller headboard assembly to move around the corner of two 3' wide hallways which meet at right angles to one another. That about the smallest turning situation you would have in a typical home.
●Reuse and Cat Use
In keeping with a basic principle of Flying Circus Studios all the redwood used in the loft was salvaged from a dismantled deck. The great problem with this reuse was the many layers of deck oil that had hardened after several decades of Flagstaff weathering. This required multiple shallow passes through a planer destroying two sets of planer blades in the process. I made no attempt to fill the blackened screw holes which add an element of curiosity and visual interest. The wood itself was amazingly free of cracking and splitting, though, of course, boards were culled and cut with this aspect in mind. Even the cutoffs were utilized to make in-drawer knife blocks for my Etsy shop.
