Easy Porch Daybed
If you do crafts like flower arranging, knitting, clay work, and sewing, you might not be interested in a project where you use a large piece of wood, and a drill. But if you have no problem with that, you can build the easiest daybed ever. And, it won’t be just a bed that you put in your living room; it will hang on the porch and it will swing as well. You don’t necessarily have to be the one doing the drilling. If you have no desire to do that part you can easily find someone – even a local woodworker – to do it for you. At some home improvement stores, if you purchase the wood there, they will do minor work for you, at little to no cost. Just get them to drill four holes for you and you’ll be ready to go home and make your porch daybed. The hanging bed is so comfortable that you’ll find yourself practically living in it.
What’s more relaxing than lying on a bed, in the shade, enjoying a warm day? When you get a piece of wood, and have four holes drilled, it will take a short period of time to make the porch daybed. The best wood is plywood – the quarter-inch thickness will be fine. The wood should be cut to be a couple of inches larger, all the way around, than the mattress you’re using for the daybed.
For any one corner, go in a couple of inches from one side, and a couple of inches from the other side, until the two lines meet. Drill a hole there. The hole should be about a half-inch in diameter. Drill a hole at each corner, making sure they’re all the same distance away from the edges.
At home, all you have to do is hang the wood. Screw a C hook into four places on the ceiling of the roof, to align with the four holes in the door. It can be helpful to piece newspaper together and cut it to be the size of the wood. Draw a circle at each corner, right where the hole is. Cut out the four circles. Climb up and tape the paper to the ceiling, where you want the daybed to be. Mark each hole on the ceiling and screw a C hook into each one.
Have four lengths of chain cut at a home improvement or hardware store. Each chain should be the same length; each one should be long enough to reach from the porch ceiling to the height you want for the bed. The height should be such that you can easily sit down on the bed, without having to jump up to get on it. So, hang the bed fairly low.
Slide the end of one chain through one hole of the wood. Hook one end of the chain onto the ceiling hook. Under the board, slide something into the last link so that it can’t go through the hole. The “something” you use could be a piece of re-bar, a large-diameter dowel, or even a stick. Do the same to hang each of the four chains. Or, use rope to hang the wood. After that, lay the mattress on the board, and take yourself a nap.
