A bed fit for a grouch.

As a drove my van to the store one day, something caught my eye.

Yep, guilty as charged! I love to look at what people have in the trash. You just never know what you might spot and that day I spotted something particularly nice.

There, pushed up beside the garbage, was a wood bed with large round posts. I turned around and drove by again. Yep, it was worth stopping. I pulled over and got out. A bit of an inspection told me why it was headed to a new home in a landfill.

The side rails were coming apart and warped. One had it's hooks torn out. (If there is a technical term for those metal arms, I have no idea.) On top of that, the whole thing was covered in white dog hair. I'm not too squeamish when it comes to stuff like that so I continued my inspection.

Headboard... dirty but nice... check. Rails... broken but may be able to fix... check.

Then the heartbreak.

The footboard looked terrible. Big chunks had been gnawed off. Like CSI, it came together. That white fur pointed to a criminal - the criminal that had probably done the misdeed of chewing off those large chunks of the footboard. I could only imagine a beaver being able to destroy the wood so thoroughly.

What kind of people keep a white pet beaver?

Okay, so it was probably a dog, but that dog had to be part beaver. I only wish I had been blogging at the time and took before pictures. It was just a few weeks ago but before I made the commitment put my heart and soul into this. I only have the rail pics due to me forgetting to put them out with the trash.

On with the story...

I couldn't just leave the bed there. The thought did cross my mind but I decided to go ahead and see what I could do. It was so terribly chewed up that after I washed it off the wood on the footboard was just crumbly and splintered. When I tried to sand it the wood just flaked out of the chewed spots. I ended up painting it first to give the chewed spots some stability. I then sanded the rough spots and added tons of wood filler. I reshaped curves that weren't there anymore.

These are two spots that didn't exist before the wonderful tub of wood filler.

Okay, so not perfection but pretty good in my opinion.

It took two applications of wood filler to build the spots up enough and I think it could used a third for those little imperfections above. After the wood filler applications dried I painted those spots again.

The side rails turned out to not be salvageable. Our bed had been on a bed frame before I brought this little project home and we decided to keep it on there. We simply added 1X6's to the outside edges of the headboard and footboard.

The 1x6's are the black things in this picture that look like side rails.

We just held them up to the side and added basic wood screws. We did pre-drill the holes to keep the wood from splitting.

After they got a coat of paint, the project was as good as done.

I hope our Oscar the Grouch bed inspired you to dig through garbages all over your community.

However, I must warn that you will find no inspiration in the current room decor. Our bedroom is in for a complete revamp, slowly but surely. The blue pillow is one that I got to recover and haven't gotten around to it. The white and black pillows belong in the living area but got borrowed for this picture because I need new bedding. The desk may be moving, the mirror will be replaced, and the giant canvas on the wall is something that currently can't find a home so it's on the wall in our master for now. I'll post pictures as I complete these projects. Just check back often. Until then...

Happy decorating!

You can see other blogger's trash to treasure makeovers by clicking here.