Our Take on the Ana White Fancy Farmhouse Bed

A while back my husband decided we needed to buy a new mattress.  He wanted to get a king size this time.  Of course we had a perfectly nice queen size bed frame with matching dressers.  I know, I know, the matching thing isn't done anymore.  We've had the furniture more than 15 years though, and back when we bought it, matching was the thing.  Anyway, we bought the king size mattress, which then meant I had to buy all new bedding too.  Sigh.  I really loved my old quilt but it doesn't fit the new bed.  But I digress.  (So what's new there?!)

I was trying to find a king-size bed frame that I liked and thought that most were seriously overpriced for the quality.  I found this bed on Ana White's site, showed my husband the picture and the plans, and we decided to go for it.  Why buy when you can build?  I think that should be our motto.

 If you've ever looked at my house ideas board on Pinterest, you will know that I would, of course, love for all my cabinetry and furniture to be white.  However, I live in a house with three other people, and that will not fly.  So although the plans show a white  painted bed, we decided to build our bed out of walnut.

 A trip back home to my father-in-law's woodworking shop, a rummage through some black walnut lumber that came from a tree that fell on their property when my husband was very young, and a trip to the lumber mill to buy the remaining pieces of walnut needed, we were ready to start the construction.  My role was mostly as photographer and moral support, but I did help with sanding and cleaning, as well as run to Menards to get more polyurethane.  It took us two days to build and get the first few coats of finish on.  We had to leave the bed at my father-in-law's and I think he put a few more coats of finish on after that.

 Here is the process in photos:
Here is the pile of lumber.
Here are the shaped trim pieces.
This is the outside frame of the headboard panel.
This is the inset portion of the headboard panel all glued up. 
This is the assembled panel--trying out trims. 
Trim layout along with legs.
Footboard.  We decided to make all the legs beefier than the original plan called for. 
Gluing and clamping the top trim pieces.
Here is the bed assembled before stain and finish.
We used a mix of two stains to get the color we wanted.
Late night stain and finish work.
Another view of finish process.  
And more.
And some more.
And one last shot of it all.  Well after midnight here.
We used some special brackets in all the corners.
Here is the finished bed assembled in our garage two weeks later--had to wait to
transport it the five hours back home.
My husband was sure we could bring the frame into the house in one piece.  I told him no way would it fit through the door.  I was right.  Here it is, taken apart and reassembled, in our room.  We added some plywood on top of the 2 x 4 frame in the previous picture.
All made up so we could go to bed.
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Planner?

I am a major list maker.  Not to the point of having lists of lists, but close.  The problem with that is that I seemed to make a new one every week or so without having finished the tasks on the previous week's.  I feel like I haven't been using my time wisely, so I thought maybe by using a daily planner, I could be more focused and have a greater sense of accomplishment.

 There are tons of beautiful planner photos and charts and such on social media--Pinterest, Instagram, and so forth.  While they are amazing looking, I don't currently have a job outside of the home and my children aren't in a ton of activities, so I didn't really feel like I needed some super duper, high dollar, fancy thing.  But I do feel that I need to focus on using my time wisely.  I finally settled on getting a student planner to try.

 I found this silver sparkly Mead planner at Target.  It was around $8.  


 It has tabbed months and then weekly spaces in between.  I'm still getting used to its layout and I'm not convinced it's quite right for me, but it is helping me focus.  I've been using it for about a month now.  At first I seriously overestimated how much I could get done in a day and had a lot left undone.  Now I think I've gone too far in the other direction and am not planning enough tasks for each day.  

 You'll notice in my photo above I have extra pages clipped in.  I now have pages taped into the front and back too.  I do like having it set up from July to June, like a school year, because that is how we plan things here.  I think maybe a binder system would work better for me, but I don't want to have a fortune in printing out cute pages either.    This is basically a fancy to-do list for me.

 Do you use a planner?  What system/brand do you use?  What types of things do you put in it?  

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