So I was happily finishing off another DIY project (electrics) when my wife turned to me and said “Baba (our term of endearment to each other) I’m getting annoyed with the dogs bed, can you make one for me”. Now if you know my wife she likes things to look just so, don’t get me wrong she never asks me for perfection, but there are certain styles of things that she likes, and it is my job to try to create these items the way she would like.
So there’s me thinking, how the hell am I going to make this dog bed, so that it fits in with the other décor we already have.
So first stop, good old Google, I spent ages trawling through what could be construed as dog beds, but none would fit in with what we have, and I wasn’t about to spend a fortune on materials either for the dogs bed.
So next stop, Pinterest, this is kinda like my go to place for inspiration now, (you can see mine here) so after a few quick searches I came across a design, that I thought would be in keeping of our style, and would suit the dogs needs.
So as you can see, a fairly simple construction, which could then be painted to suit the wife’s tastes, or shabby chic if she needed / wanted to.
As I sat there eating my lunch, I decided to show the missus and sister in law my idea for the dog bed, as it turns out they were both in agreement, but could lose the middle partition. Great I thought that makes this even easier.
Once we had all finished eating and having our lunch time chat, I guided the missus to the location of where she wanted the dog bed and proceeded to ask her for measurements. This is a lesson I have learned over time, as no matter how many times I decide to go ahead and build something the way I think it should be built, chances are I’ll probably get it wrong, as they both have an image in their heads of how a room should look and where things will be placed, none of this information is ever really shared with me, unless they need something doing (apparently I’m not very good at design – they are probably right!).
So with dimensions in hand I set about looking through my scrap off cuts that I had lying around. So after running a piece of 8×6 through my table saw and few times, and then cutting the bits down to size on my table saw, I set about building the framework. As is always the way when I start to build a project off the cuff, I didn’t have the right length screws, so after a bit of for f**ks sake and getting annoyed, I proceeded to delve into the depths of the screw box to see what could be found. As look would have it, there was a part box of screws that turned out to be the right size, happy days I can get cracking, without having to go to the DIY store in our village.
So I’d just got the base frame built, when my lovely missus’s head appears at the window, and I get another “Baba”, (now whenever I hear that word, in that tone, either she wants something, or has changed her mind – you guys will know what I’m talking about), surprisingly after looking at the frame being built she had decided that the length wasn’t big enough, and perhaps we should remeasure and start again. At this point you can probably guess, I was not the happiest bunny in the world, so I handed her the tape measure, and informed her that I was going for a cig, and to let me know when she had worked out the dimensions.
A few minutes later my wonderful wife appears, and proceeds to let me know that I am building it wrong, and that she has a better way of making the dog bed, now experience has taught me, to bite my tongue and listen to what she has to say, as sometimes she has good ideas, and does not necessarily know the method that I would be using. Now I must have given off either an annoyed vibe, or one of my looks as she calls it ( no idea what she is on about ), as the missus offered to help me build the dog bed using her method. Now surprisingly when doing DIY, me and the missus go one of two ways, we either fall out big style, as both of us have our own ideas for doing things, or we work really well together and end up making something really cool.
As it has turned out, on this occasion, we have worked really well together and there was no big falling out of disagreement ( shock horror I know ).
Now we had some floor boards lying around and decided to use them for the framework, and fortunately I could re-use some the battens I had made for my original framework. So I set about cutting the floor boards down to size, we went for 110cm in length, 60cm width, and 30cm depth, as we need to accommodate two dogs into the one pet bed. With boards cut to length and battens located I pre drilled the holes so as to avoid any splitting of the wood, we also decided not to bother doing a lower section for the entry, as both our dogs are medium to large in size, so it would be pointless as they can comfortably step over 30cm. For the back we simply attached another two floor boards and put battens on the back to hold them in place.
As you can see below on the back my wife decided that lets do something a bit more fancy than a plain square back, so after handing her a pencil, she proceeded to free-hand the design, saying that this “will give me practice using my jigsaw”, whenever I hear a phrase like that I normally fills me with dread, as it is going to be something tricky or complicated, as it turns out it wasn’t too bad.
You will probably notice that we didn’t put a base to the pet bed, this was my ingenious thinking, since we have tiled floors, what’s the point of catching the pet hair and grit off of the dogs in the bottom of the pet bed, when all you have to do is lift the bed up, and sweep the floor? Turns out I had a good idea (first one of that day), as there is nothing worse than spending ages cleaning when you don’t have to.
The arms were some left over off cuts from when I had trimmed down some 8×6 previously, so with a quick bit of sanding the dog bed was done, all in only a couple of hours. The next day the missus set about doing some varnishing, just to make it that bit easier for the cleaning, and then set too making the actual bed.
Now we have only been here two months so far, so have not had a lot of time to go out and buy things that we need, so again back to improvisation and DIY. We had an old duvet that the dogs have been using, so decided to use that again for the bedding, but we needed something that would be easy to clean, then the missus had a brain wave, why not use the table cloth that we no longer use. This table cloth is one of those that has a plastic shiny finish to it, so is ideal for wiping down and also for stopping any doggy smell penetrating into the duvet, but how the hell do you turn a table cloth into a dog bed?
Quite simply as it seems, all you need is some of those Velcro sticky things to join the sides, and then some parcel tape to go over the joints, after all, who is going to see the underneath? Then she popped the original duvet cover (had been cleaned in the mean time) back over the whole bed, and jobs a good one.
So where did I get the dog bed for less than £15 part from, ok so here’s the breakdown if we had gone out and bought the materials.
Floor boards – 3m length x 2 @ £2.50 each (1 and a 1/2 boards used so a £3.75 cost)
8×6 4m length x 1 @ £4.00 each (only used a 1/4 so £1.00 cost)
Screws 45p in total
Velcro sticky pads x 2 20p total
Parcel tape 50p for a roll
Table cloth £ 1 per sqm x 2 – £2.00 total
Varnish £3.00 a tin ( hardly used any so a £1.00 cost)
Duvet and duvet cover £6.00
Now these prices are roughly accurate as we buy everything here in Bulgarian Levs, and the exchange rate is roughly 2.20 Levs to the GBP, but some bits and pieces you would probably have lying around so your overall cost would be a lot less, or in our case as we already had everything, completely free and I’ve made some more space in my random wood pile.
So here are the pics, feel free to comment and let me know if there is anything you would have done differently or better.
