the Framboise Manor monster bed!

we have a confession to make...we are bed hogs. like hogs. it is almost sinful!

however, when we first got together almost 11 yrs ago (our 11 yr anniversary is Jan 19!), i was 30 and jambaloney was 36. we had both spent our adult lives up to that point sleeping in large beds - by ourselves!!! prior to living together, jambaloney had a queen-sized futon and i had a king-sized waterbed.

when we moved in to our first place together, we tried for over a year to learn to sleep together in a king-sized bed. neither of us was getting any proper rest. i roll around in bed all night long and often end up sideways or upside down when i wake. jambaloney doesn't roll around so much...but he does have a thing about having blankets and with me rolling around so much i tend to steal the blankets. so we sat down one day and had a frank conversation - we needed 2 beds!!!

it was the smartest thing that we have ever done! we each got a queen-sized platform bed and mattress, pushed the two beds together in the middle of the room and have slept happily that way for the last 8+yrs. we each have our own bedding as well so there is no chance of someone waking up shivering all the time - teehee!

anyway - here at the Manor we only have 2 small bedrooms. and we gave away one of our beds and mattresses before we left the city. for the first few months of being at the Manor we were sleeping together on one queen-sized mattress on the floor. but at least we had our own duvets. because of the shock of getting here, near freezing to death and all of the other craziness that happened last winter - our bedroom was not at the top of the list of things to worry about.

but we eventually got around to dealing with the "bed" problem and created a ton of extra storage in the process! i told you that we are bed hogs so don't be surprised to see this:




here's a bit of a better shot:



yep - that's a hand-built platform bed that spans the width of the room. on jambaloney's side (window side) is a queen mattress and mine is a double. but as he is not a roller, we often wake up with him squashed against the window and me laying sideways across the two beds - it's awesome! we love our "bed" room....pun intended. yep it is a room full of bed! and it is also an awesome place to go and flop during the day and yak and make plans. you can find us sprawled on that monster at just about any time.



the great news about building your own platform bed is that you can choose the materials and build storage space into it - something we are severely lacking at the Manor. have a peak:



we built the base of the bed using 2 X 12s, like rafters, and then covered them with 1 X 8 slats about a half inch apart. the bed is 9ft wide and 7ft long. underneath the bed there are 8 compartments - 2 small ones of 4 inches wide on each end of the bed, and then 6 compartments that are 12 inches high, 14 inches wide and 7ft long. you can stuff a lot of stuff in a 7ft long compartment...and the compartments are big enough for me and jambaloney to climb under to retrieve stuff.

this is an excellent place to store preps! and because we don't want to broadcast our preps to the world, i cleared our preps out from under the bed, and just put some stuff there to show the height and what you can store and whatnot. we have plastic bins and buckets with lids and can store much stuff in those and put them under the bed.



yep - a monster bed and an excellent, hidden place for preps! what could be better?

(we also plan to build a headboard with shelving and shelves all around the room. we just haven't gotten to it yet!)