: Our feature on Apartment Therapy

In the aftermath of being featured yesterday on Apartment Therapy, there are no words other than…wow. I am not accustomed to seeing the amount of traffic I had on my blog yesterday. I’m used to my mom, mother-in-law, and the occasional friend stopping by to read what we have going on over here. (Notice I did not mention my husband, Mr. Fancy Pants. Because although he was the person that encouraged me to start this blog, he says my posts “have too many words” and rarely reads them all the way through).

To those of you who happened upon my blog for the first time yesterday, welcome. I hope you enjoyed what you read. I wish I was better at posting consistently, but I’m not. I do this because I enjoy it. When it becomes a chore, I take a break. I am trying to post often now that we live in OR and most of my family and friends are far far away–mass updates on our life are one thing I will say “thank you” to the internet for.

For us, it was so mind-blowing to see our home on Apartment Therapy. We’ve been married for three years (almost) and have lived in three different places together. Two apartments in Austin, TX and now our house here in Portland, OR. I think I’ll do a post someday on each of them. It’s funny to look back at the other two and see how our style has changed…well not so much changed, it has just taken a while for our two styles to converge into something cohesive. To our marriage, William brought neon colors and crazy shapes. I brought a love for things that were old (and let me just clarify and say that while “vintage” is cool, “old” is not always classified as such). Over the years, his taste has tamed a bit and mine has become more refined. I’m not going to lie, I LOVE what happens when our minds collaborate. Turns out we are pretty good when we mix our ideas together. That’s the thing about marrying an artist…ideas are never in short supply.

All of that said, yesterday was a fun day for us. So thank you to Adrienne and Apartment Therapy for that. To see the post on their site, click here.

Drum roll please…the bed is finished. It actually has been finished since I posted about the headboard but I wanted to write about it in two parts. (which I might add caused a very interesting conversation between Mr. Fancy Pants and I as he wanted me to write the process all in one post-it’s conversations like those that remind me how differently our minds work).

I am happy to report 1 thing. It is still all in one piece. Not that I ever doubted our abilities, but let’s call a spade a spade. We had no idea what we were doing. Don’t get me wrong, we did a lot of research but I can affirmably say neither of us brought into this marriage “bed building skills” on our resume.

So, without further ado, I give you our bed. (silent applause)

: Completed headboard, lighting and bedframe for our room in Portland!

Suffice it to say, I have been to the Home Depot in Portland more times than I ever wanted to/thought I would need to. Our design was pretty basic.

: Rough sketch we worked off of (emphasis on the word rough). We were winging it.

Here’s the step by step process:

First we laid out the exterior and interior boards. We staggered the vertical boards between the horizontal ones for maximum sturdiness. When all of those lined up to our liking, we started with the wood screws!

: Working hard into the wee hours of the morning.

Some of the screws were a little difficult to get in…and William’s drill was dying so we stood it up on its side to give him some additional leverage. Didn’t really work…

: Drill starting to die on us…

We tried to mimic the design of our living room shelves (post to come) and used the same piping for the legs of the bed. We decided 9 legs were plenty. MORE than plenty probably. We screwed the base flanges into the frame before we carried it inside. Also note, this is outfit #2 for William (same night).

: 9 legs = 18 base flanges

After carrying it inside, we stood it up on its side and screwed all of the legs in to the base flanges. We pulled out the gloves for this part. This far in to the home projects process, we both had blisters on our hands.

: Legs in place!

Momentary pause for small victories…it seems sturdy. Success.

: Mr. Fancy Pants: Artist by day, Bed frame maker by night

To make sure it was extra sturdy and the mattress was fully supported (we do not have box springs) we placed 6 horizontal slats across the frame to give the mattress a level surface. Side note, I never knew the purpose of box springs until we started this process. We always had them growing up and when we considered just a mattress I thought “surely we have to have box springs…because you have to have box springs??” Turns out they aren’t as useful as I thought. Made for interesting reading though. Wikipedia it. You’ll see.

: 6 slats will finish it off!

: Yup. Not going anywhere.

: Curiosity hasn’t killed Miss Loretta…but she did almost get squished by the mattress because we couldn’t get her off the bed frame.

: View from below

TADA!!!!

And we’re done! William also installed those amazing lights. They are custom fixtures he wired himself. And yes, I will admit to all of the internet that I did almost electrocute him. I’m not so good with electricity. We’re about 2.5 weeks in to the bed and we haven’t woken up in the middle of the night on the floor yet so I think we did a pretty good job!

Side note, isn’t this picture great of Miss Loretta looking up at the lights? She is still pretty fascinated by them! And one more shout out to dirtsa on Etsy–our pillows look amazing! In case anyone was wondering:

Bedding: Restoration Hardware- Belgian Linen Provence Stripe (Prairie & Fog)
Pillows: Etsy- dirtsa studio Letter Pillows
Lighting: Hippo Hardware (PDX) Marconi Perma-Glow Signature 60 Watts
Cat: Oregon Humane Society