We have a bit of a guest bedroom situation we need to deal with. Nearly two years ago, we completed a budget makeover of our guest bedroom. This involved plaster repair, hole patching, a fresh coat of paint, and a few nice accessories to turn a room previously reserved for junk storage into a proper area where guests are able to...gasp....sleep. I know, what a novel idea.

One of the best parts of this room's quick and dirty makeover (and one of the most popular blog posts on our website) was ultimately our DIY that transformed an old door into a fancy headboard.

I have to admit, I was rather skeptical of the concept and our ability to pull it off, but Wendy's grand vision and my modest knowledge of woodworking allowed us to embrace a true trash to treasure moment. The headboard served as a perfect backdrop to our inflatable mattress for a solid year and a half, making an otherwise temporary bed look rather permanent in its home.

However, after we purchased a new mattress set for our master bedroom in September 2012, we were faced with a somewhat difficult dilemma -- what to do with the old mattress? Rather than put it on the curb, we figure it's at least as comfortable and useful as our inflatable mattress, so we might as well put it to use. We collapsed our air mattress and moved our old box spring and mattress into the guest bedroom, where it's sat on the floor since that fateful day.

Moving the old inflatable mattress out of the room also eliminated a critical storage area (and by storage area, I mean shoving stuff under the bed). From our central vac hose and wand, to random ironing supplies, and of course some of Wendy's hoarded shopping bags, they all found some way to he nearly tucked beneath that inflatable bed. Now that our old box spring and mattress are right on the floor, there is no "under the bed" available to stash our stuff.

This brings is to our current situation. We have a guest room that has a mattress and box spring sitting on the floor. The bed is low and offers no storage. Our headboard is too tall for the mattress, and the whole exposed box spring just looks, well, like something you might have seen in my college fraternity house. Rather than continue to be frustrated by our guest bedroom, we're going to do something about it. Today I'll fill you in on our plan and we can see just how long it takes us to actually implement the grand scheme.

Given how much we like our custom headboard, we want to stick with the theme and look of what we have, so we're planning on building out the rest of the bed in a similar manner. This means we'll have a proper bed frame of sorts to complement the headboard. But our plan doesn't stop with a simple bed frame. Oh no, that wouldn't suit our style. In order to complicate the matter, but to make it look far more functional, we're also planning on building it quite a bit taller and including a significant amount of under bed storage in the form of drawers. We've taken our inspiration from several styles of bed that we've seen in various catalogs. Here are a few from Pottery Barn that demonstrate the style we're going for.

The $1500+ price tag though just seems crazy, especially when we can build it exactly to our liking for just a couple hundred. In our design we're planning to incorporate two drawers on each side of the bed, each with a paneled drawer front to mimic the panels of the headboard. We'll also add two panels in the foot board area, again to mimic the headboard. The foot board will not extend much higher than the sideboards, if at all, and each drawer will offer a significant amount of storage.

That photo represents a rather crude sketch of what we're trying to accomplish, as well as a simple list of the lumber we'll need. I've also placed an order for a few sets of full extension drawer slides that will ultimately support the interior. But hey, anything will be better than this travesty.

I'm actually pretty excited to get this project moving along. Sure, we have a ton of other things ongoing right now (ahem, the dreaded master bathroom project), but I haven't done any substantial woodworking lately. I'm hoping this can be one of those projects. 

Do you have any experience building drawers or a storage system? Maybe you have plans for keeping things neatly tucked away in your bedroom? We'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas.