This DIY project comes from David Gardiner, a reader from Alberta, who uses cull wood from lumber yards to build under the bed storage drawers or entire Captain’s beds. He explains where to find cull wood and the benefits of using it for projects such as this.

I had an idea that has worked very well for my wife and I.  We originally put it into action in our last house which was fairly small.

Our bedroom was so small that we were unable to have a dresser without shoving the bed into the corner.  In order to fix this situation, I took our old bed frame out of the room and ended up with more storage space than I originally had.

I built a wooden box, the same dimensions as our mattress and about 8 inches high.  In the box, I was able to make drawers that pull out beside the bed.  It added about 3 inches of height to the bed which was all added usable storage space, and I was able to attach the existing headboard and foot board to the box so that the bed looked virtually the same as it did before this change.

The hinges were not expensive, are available at your local hardware store, and they are able to hold up to 100 pounds without creating much extra resistance to open the drawer.  Now, I understand that there was space under the bed before this adaptation, but that space is now much more accessible and useful.  I wouldn’t normally put my clothes under the bed because it would not be very convenient (and I might never find a matching pair of socks again). With these drawers, I keep clothing under there and it is as convenient as having a conventional dresser, without the banging of my thigh against the corner in the night.

I found the project took only a few hours to complete, with minimal need for tools, and a reasonably small cost.

Tools

• good screwdriver
• small drill
• small set of drill bits
• regular carpenter’s saw
• pencil
• long ruler or square
• hammer

Cull Wood

The wood used was extremely inexpensive since I bought what they call “Cull Wood”. “Cull” is wood with blemishes, slight warps, or just shorter pieces that make them unusable for a major project, but suitable for a smaller project such as these drawers, and ideal for transportation home in a small car.  Cull Wood is readily available at buding supply stores such as Home Depot, Rona, or Home Hardware.  You simply need to ask to see their cull wood rack or pile. You can go through the pile to pick out the wood that suits your project, and it generally costs a small fraction of the price of the standard wood.  Additionally, you are recycling since cull wood is only allowed to sit around the stores for a short time before it is incinerated (so that it doesn’t pile up and take up valuable store space.

I once bought all of one store’s cull wood for $150 over the phone. I expected to get a good sized bundle to rebuild some small steps at my back door, but I ended up with 1.5 tonnes of lumber, of which I still have some today.

This wood is useful for making shelves, shoring up that sagging couch, or making planter boxes that hang off your windows or balcony railings. It doesn’t matter how “ugly” the drawers look on the inside because they are under the bed. You can take as much or as little care in building them as you wish.  The only important part, aesthetically speaking, is the visible drawer front which you can purchase a nicer piece of wood or other material to match your room decor.

As you can see the one I built is smaller than the one that I describe in the article, and it doesn’t completely replace my frame.  I just raised the frame on this one by 3 inches.  I’ve built others for folks that totally replaced the frame so that the mattress and box spring sat directly on the box, and was the size of the entire bed. Incidentally, this also allowed for 2 drawers side by side on the full box design.  My bedside tables did not allow for that so, when building this type of project, all space and fit issues must be considered.  I figure it cost me less than $30 CDN to build mine and I have done others that were full box design for less that $40 or $50 CDN.

I understand that I am not the first person to think of this idea, and that they generally call them Captain’s Beds, but this is a way to take what you already have, and turn it into a better use of space. Best of all…I no longer have to vacuum under the bed which, in and of
itself, makes this all worth it.

Happy building!

Great ideas, Dave. Thanks! - Anne

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