Bed made of logs, DIY manufacturing technology

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Remains of building materials are paid blanks for the production of home furniture, household items, and simply interesting homemade items of a decorative nature. To realize your fantasies, you will need a minimum set of tools and skills acquired when building a house or cottage from a log.

An interesting and reliable solution.

Advantages and disadvantages

Today, like centuries ago, people try to choose the most reliable, safe and beautiful furniture for their living spaces. Many new synthetic materials, decorative techniques and specific mechanisms have been invented that are used in furniture production. But natural wood is still highly valued. The most common species used to create furniture are oak, beech, walnut, birch, pine, alder, acacia, cherry, and mahogany.

Log furniture is considered an elite purchase because it has a large number of positive qualities:

• high aesthetics - wooden surfaces have a luxurious appearance, unique texture and pattern. With their help, designers create truly “royal” interiors in ordinary city apartments and country houses. Wood goes well with many other materials: glass, metal, stone. We also note that the color schemes of natural wood are very diverse, which allows you to choose an option for any interior style;
• ecological purity, naturalness, pleasant aroma. Logs do not contain unsafe substances in their composition, therefore wooden interior items are not capable of triggering the development of allergic reactions, poisoning and other health problems in humans or pets. Species such as pine, spruce, fir have a positive effect on people with diseases of the respiratory system;
• durability - natural wood demonstrates high strength and resistance to many negative factors in the environment, therefore it lasts for a long time without changing its performance characteristics;
• easy maintenance - solid wood does not require maintenance, so it retains its original beauty for a long time. And if during operation a scratch or chip appears on the surface of the cabinet, it can be restored without much hassle;
• versatility - wooden log furniture is relevant in almost any room. The living room will look simply chic, the bedroom will be filled with coziness, and the children's room will be as safe and practical as possible with such decor.

There are also disadvantages to furniture made from timber, which is important to be aware of when choosing such interior items for a bedroom, living room or children's room. We will describe them in detail below:

• ability to crack under the influence of high humidity in the room. Even if the wood surface is well treated, it will remain sensitive to moisture. If there is no optimal humidity in the room, the furniture may dry out or swell;
• excessively high cost of wooden products. Often this fact scares off the buyer, forcing him to choose a more affordable analogue. To be fair, we add that the technology for producing interior items from timber is complex, which is why they are expensive for buyers;
• high weight - furniture made from logs is not suitable for old houses with frame floors;
• specific qualities - different types of wood evoke different tactile sensations and associative thoughts in a person. For example, the natural smell of pine can scare away one person and attract another.

Why a DIY wooden crib is better than a store-bought one

There are both objective and subjective advantages of homemade children's furniture over purchased ones, and we will try to list them all.

• In the realities of our country, young families often face financial difficulties when giving birth to a child. And making a baby crib with your own hands is much cheaper than buying it at a furniture store.
• You choose the manufacturing materials yourself, and you have the opportunity to ensure their quality and safety when purchasing. A baby crib made by yourself will be made of wood, not chipboard.
• You will have the opportunity to come up with the design of your future crib yourself. It can be made multifunctional in the case of a small apartment. You can also take into account the wishes and preferences of the child and the overall design of the nursery when choosing or creating drawings.
• You won't have to worry about the structure being insufficiently strong when your child grows up and starts jumping on the bed. After all, you will check everything personally during production. In addition, you can sell a crib made of natural wood, also handmade, for much more than a purchased one when your baby grows out of it.

And finally, we cannot help but say that any father will get real pleasure creating something for his child with his own hands. And if your baby is already old enough, then he will get no less pleasure from helping you with your work. Not only will you be able to spend time with your child, but also teach him the basics of manual labor and explain the rules for handling various tools.

Types of products

Furniture made from logs is very relevant for many premises. In its manufacture, different types of wood are used, so the operational parameters may vary.

Conventionally, experts divide all wood species used in the production of log interior items into two types:

• made of hard wood: maple, oak, ash, walnut. Such species are relevant for the manufacture of furniture that experiences the highest load during operation. For example, a bed frame, a dining table top;
• from soft wood: poplar, willow, pine, spruce, chestnut. These types of wood are used for the manufacture of decorative elements when decorating log furniture. For example, facades, carved decorations.

We also note that furniture made from solid logs will be more reliable, durable, and more expensive than options made from laminated veneer lumber.

The appearance of log furniture may also be different, which is a consequence of the use of different compositions to give the item high resistance to impact:

• painted - to decorate wooden furniture, various types of coloring compounds are used, which can completely cover the natural pattern of the wood or slightly shade it. This ultimately determines the external aesthetics of the item;
• varnished (matte, glossy). Varnish with a gloss effect allows you to add clarity and brightness to the wood grain. Such surfaces are perfect for classic interiors. And matte wax gives the surface a special charm, relevant for country, Provence and other areas of residential decor.

Preparing driftwood for work

Depending on the place where natural material is collected, its preparation for furniture manufacturing will vary:

Figures 1-3. Items and furniture made from driftwood.

1. On the shore of the sea or lake with salt water, you can pick up soaked and dried driftwood. This is the best material for any wood crafts. Its processing consists only of cleaning it from contaminants and additional drying.
2. Driftwood is found in water and on the banks of freshwater reservoirs, forest lakes and rivers. Like driftwood, the wood of such driftwood has been “treated” with water, there is no bark on it, and its color differs from the color of ordinary dry branches. One of the varieties of driftwood includes bog oak, which has a dark wood color and is considered the most durable material. Other tree species will also be quite resistant to the effects of time and atmospheric phenomena. Fuel extracted from the water is dried and cleaned of silt and other contaminants.
3. Roots, trunks and branches of trees collected in forest clearings or left over after gardening are also suitable for creating furniture. It is advisable to sand them before use. Sanded driftwood is thoroughly cleaned of rotten and rotten places, removing loose layers down to solid wood.

After preliminary processing of the collected material has been carried out, it is cut into pieces of the required size and suitable shape. Individual elements are adjusted to each other, creating a pattern or using curved branches as headboards and chairs, armrests, legs and other furniture parts.

In the right places, drill holes and grooves for fasteners, select dowels or dowels that can be sawed from straight branches of the same tree. Once everything is ready, you can proceed to assembly.

Where is it most often used?

The use of rounded logs is relevant in many stylistic areas of residential decor, as it can be successfully combined with other materials, with many color shades in the decor of walls, ceilings, and floors. But most often such decorative items can be found in rooms with decor in the following styles.

No less relevant is log furniture for a garden house, a gazebo on a summer cottage or a park. But you shouldn’t leave it in the open air for a long time, as precipitation will negatively affect the quality of the surface.

You can complement the beauty of timber furniture with the help of decorative elements made of natural rattan, glass or metal, leather.

Installation tools

A standard set of tools is suitable for working with wood:

Figure 4. A self-made bed from driftwood is in no way inferior to one bought in a store.

• hacksaw, electric or chainsaw;
• chisel;
• drill with attachments and a set of drills;
• sandpaper;
• antiseptic;
• wood glue;
• screws, nails;
• natural materials: driftwood, driftwood, logs and branches.

In some cases, additional materials will be required for making furniture: fittings, glass, mirrors, etc. If you plan to make lighting fixtures, you will need lamp holders, lamps and electrical wires.

Nuances of choice

Log furniture has a number of advantages. However, this rule applies only to those pieces of furniture that are made strictly according to technology using high-quality fittings and fasteners. Saving on components or protective coatings for logs can have a detrimental effect on the durability of structures and will reduce their resistance to the negative influence of external factors. Therefore, you need to choose such interior items carefully, without haste, weighing all the pros and cons.

Let us describe the main factors that cannot be ignored when choosing wooden furniture:

• cost - the process of creating furniture from logs is quite complex, painstaking and cannot be rushed. Only if this condition is met can it be said that the log bed will serve for several decades in a row. That is why interior items of this kind cannot be cheap. A low price should alert the buyer, force him to carefully inspect the design for defects, read the accompanying documentation for the product (quality certificate, passport, assembly and maintenance instructions);
• sizes - log interior items often have impressive dimensions, so they should not be selected for narrow spaces with poor lighting. In small rooms they will look overly bulky and will weigh down the space. And for large spaces, such furniture is simply a godsend;
• surface aesthetics - the logs used in the manufacturing process of the furniture structure should not contain knots, chips of the interlayer in the wood mass, and the annual rings should be located as close as possible. These factors will indicate the high quality of the material used. If the bed does have such shortcomings, its price should be significantly reduced.

Taking these factors into account, you can choose successful models of tables, chairs, beds or cabinets made from rounded logs and profiled logs for your home or cottage.

Manufacturing technology of a standard bed

Making a solid wood bed with your own hands is carried out in several successive steps:

1. Preparation of necessary tools and materials.
2. Carrying out calculations of the quantity of required consumables and their sizes.
3. Pre-treatment of lumber.
4. Making the frame.
5. Assembling and installing the back and legs.

The final stage of work is treating the finished product with protective solutions, as well as decorating the bed.

Installation tools

To create a bed from logs, you will need the following tools:

• Roulette;
• Pencil;
• Construction corner;
• Level;
• Screwdriver;
• Axe;
• Plane;
• Bit;
• Grinder machine. The tool can be replaced with sandpaper of various grain sizes;
• Chisel;
• Mallet;
• tongue and groove;
• Hex key;
• Jigsaw;
• Electric drill.

To make a bed from logs you will need a jigsaw.
Also, to work with boards you will need a hacksaw.

Calculations

To calculate the required amount of consumables, as well as the dimensions of lumber, it is necessary to draw up a drawing of the future structure. In this case, a ready-made detailed bed diagram can be used. Using it, the parameters of the product can be easily changed proportionally, thus achieving the required dimensions of the bed.

The diagram must indicate not only the dimensions of the future bed made of rounded or chopped logs, but also the attachment points of the combined elements. For complex structures, it is recommended to create drawings of the future product in different projections.

To calculate the dimensions of the bed, you can focus on the dimensions of the existing mattress. It should be taken into account that a comfortable sleeping place is one that fully accommodates the width of a person with his hands clasped in the abdominal area, and at the same time there is a margin of 20-25 cm from the elbows to the edge of the bed or sleeping place.

Material pre-treatment

Before starting work on creating a bed from chopped solid wood, the lumber must be additionally processed. Pre-finishing of the material consists of the following procedures:

1. When purchasing solid logs, the bark must be removed from the lumber. This is done using a mallet and chisel or an ax. The bark can be left only in cases where it shows no signs of damage. Such logs cannot be sanded, but are only thoroughly impregnated with stain in 3-4 layers and covered with varnish. However, the use of beds made from bark logs often results in injuries. Therefore, it is still better to remove the top layer of wood.
2. Sand the logs using medium-grit sandpaper. In this way, the top layer of wood is removed, renewing it after storage in warehouses. This stage also allows you to further smooth out the unevenness of the lumber and prepare the wood for deep impregnation.
3. Impregnation of lumber with stain. When using the solution, not only the wood is painted in the desired shade, but also its additional disinfection.

Be sure to remove the bark from whole logs.
You can use both rounded and chopped logs when making a bed. Boards are used as additional lumber when creating beds from solid wood.

At the end of the preparatory stage, the logs are trimmed to the required dimensions. If you plan to make a massive bed from beams, semicircular cuts are made at the ends of the logs, allowing the rounded elements to be tightly placed on top of each other.

Frame making

When creating the frame of a classic standard bed 2x1.6 m from solid wood, you will need logs 2.2-2.4 m long, with a trunk diameter of at least 20 cm. You will also need boards 10 cm wide and 2.5-cm thick. 3 cm. The boards must be cut to a length of 1.6 m. They will be needed to create support for the mattress.

To install a support under the frame, you will need beams that will be attached along the inner perimeter of the frame, and one supporting central board.

An example of a log bed frame

The assembly of the frame from the beams occurs in the following sequence:

1. On a hard surface, 4 logs are laid out in the shape of a rectangle of a suitable size, 2 of which have cuts. The elements are connected to each other with dowels or self-tapping screws.
2. Along the inner perimeter of the logs, at the same level in the middle, a support beam is fixed using self-tapping screws.
3. In the middle of the frame, at the same level, parallel to the side logs, a support board is fixed.
4. Perpendicular to the sidewalls, boards are laid on the supports, which will serve as lamellas. They are fixed to the supports using self-tapping screws.

The optimal distance between the lamella boards is 4 cm. Instead of boards, you can also use a solid sheet of plywood. However, in this case the structure will be much weaker.

Attaching the back and legs

The backs and legs can be attached to a bed made of logs as separate elements, or built onto a frame. To make the backs and legs separately, a pair of logs are placed vertically at a distance of 1.6 m from each other. From above and 10-20 cm from the floor they are connected to each other perpendicularly by beams or logs. The elements are fixed using self-tapping screws.

For greater structural strength, the perpendicular elements of the backrest can be additionally equipped with stiffening ribs, in the form of thin beams or rounded logs. The second headboard is made using the same principle. If desired, it can be built of the same or less height. The backs with legs are attached to the frame using self-tapping screws in several places.

When adding the back and legs to the bed body, 2-4 logs are used as the lower support and 1-3 elements for constructing the frame. To extend the legs, 2 logs are connected using dowels. The bed frame is turned upside down and connected logs are fixed along its edges. After this, the structure is turned over to its normal position. At the same time, the legs extended along the edges should look like a continuation of the frame.

Finished log bed with legs and headboard

The back is made according to the same principle. Holes for dowels are made in the logs in the legs and at the head, and additional logs are fixed on top of them. For strength, such connections are additionally fixed with wood glue, which fills all the seams of the structure.

After assembly, the structure must stand until the glue completely hardens. Only after this can you begin the final finishing of the bed.

The final stage

After assembling the entire structure, the logs must be sanded with medium or fine-grained sandpaper. A grinder with an abrasive wheel of 140-220 microns is also suitable for this work. After processing, the wood is impregnated with a colorless or tinted stain. When it dries, the product is coated with varnish.

You can add shine to your bed in another way. The wood is coated with teak oil in several layers, and then treated with furniture wax and carefully rubbed with a leather grinding wheel. With this treatment, the tactile sensations when touching the bed will be much more pleasant.

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Consequences of accusing a woman of passivity

A number of complexes caused by the fear of being a log in the bed can seriously affect self-esteem and lead to frigidity. Therefore, the conversation with your wife needs to be structured without claims or accusations.

A defensive reaction will not allow her to agree with her husband; she will convince herself that she can do everything in bed, and her husband is unreasonably trying to humiliate her. This approach will not solve the problem.

Immediately after defensive actions, the girl will most likely move on to self-flagellation. Here it is impossible to avoid coldness in relationships and the emergence of distance between spouses.

Mistrust can grow over a long period of time and in the end many couples come to the conclusion that they no longer want each other.

If some women block the desire for sex on a subconscious level and thereby feel even more like an insensitive log, then others, on the contrary, begin to be active in bed.

Sometimes it reaches the point of absurdity and sex becomes unbearable, because feelings and emotions leave it, the girl has one goal - to move so that the bed breaks.

How to correctly determine the size of furniture?

Buyers are faced with the problem of the dimensions of bedroom sets. Finding a high-quality item that fits perfectly in size and fits into the interior is quite difficult.

It is very important to determine the size of the product in advance. A hastily purchased bed may turn out to be larger than the area of ​​the room allows, or, on the contrary, small enough to accommodate two people.

Formula for a comfortable crib

To avoid any inconvenience, it is worth correctly calculating the size of the future sleeping place, using a very simple formula.

Modern style

• But before moving on to calculations, you should know that the length of a standard bed is approximately 2 to 2.2 meters, but experts are sure that in order to feel comfortable while sleeping, you should add another 20 cm to your height.
• With this calculation, the sleeper will not experience discomfort associated with lack of space.
• As for the width of the product, sleeping beds can be divided into several types:

Single beds from 90 cm.
width up to one meter. One and a half meters from one meter to one and a half or not much more.