Rebuilding My King Bed With Better Storage

I made a bed with storage about 10 years ago, and it’s held up really well over time. The original design featured three big drawers on each side, giving us tons of storage space for things we don’t need every day. But like with any project, I discovered a couple of issues after living with it for a while.

Funny enough, one of the problems was actually related to the storage itself. While two of the drawers worked perfectly, that third drawer wouldn’t open properly because of my bedside table. When I built the bed, I didn’t have a bedside table, so that drawer could extend all the way back. Now with the table in place, that drawer was essentially useless – definitely something that needed fixing.

The other issue became apparent when I took a closer look at the bed’s construction. The drawers on the sides are basically two cabinets connected by stringers. This design left a huge amount of wasted space in the middle of the bed. So I decided it was time for an upgrade that would solve both these problems at once. The plan was to rebuild the base with better spacing for the drawers and add a functional headboard that would look great and provide even more storage.

I started by recreating the base with different spacing for the drawers. I couldn’t just modify the original piece since everything was glued together, making it impossible to move the dividers. But that was fine – I set that wood aside for another project. The new base would solve the problem with that third drawer by starting it a bit further out from the wall, giving it clearance from the bedside table. Once I had that sorted out, it was time to focus on building a headboard that would push the bed out those few extra inches while adding some style and function.

My wife and I had different ideas about what the headboard should look like. I originally wanted open shelves for books and decorations, but my wife preferred a cleaner look without visible items that might end up looking messy. We both agreed that we wanted something we could lean against while sitting up in bed to read. After some back and forth, we came up with a compromise – a mid-century modern inspired headboard with a slightly slanted back and sliding panels on the front. This design would allow us to hide most items while still providing storage for books and other things.

Building the headboard was fairly straightforward. I ordered walnut plywood since I didn’t have a good local source for it. The design consisted mainly of 8-inch strips for the sides, top, and bottom. The only tricky part was getting the angles right for the sliding panels, since they needed to lean back at a 7-degree angle. I used Autodesk Fusion to model the whole thing, which gave me all the measurements and angles I needed. If you’re looking to learn Fusion for your own projects, check out our Fusion for Makers online course – it’s a game-changer for planning complex builds like this one.

I wanted to test my design before cutting into the expensive walnut, so I made a small-scale model to make sure the sliding mechanism would work. The doors needed to slide up into the top track, then drop down into the bottom track. Since the whole unit was slanted back, the tracks weren’t directly aligned – the top one was set back a bit. Once I confirmed the design worked, I cut the actual pieces, adding rabbets around the back to inset the quarter-inch plywood backing. This didn’t just look cleaner; it added structural rigidity to the whole unit.

After assembling the headboard with pocket holes, edge banding all the exposed plywood edges, and installing the shelves, it was time to make the sliding doors and tracks. I procrastinated a bit on this step, so I switched to finishing the base first. This involved wrapping the entire bed frame in walnut plywood panels that matched the doors, keeping the grain running continuously down the sides and along the ends. I also built a huge drawer for the foot of the bed, maximizing every inch of potential storage space. The front of the drawer got a nice plywood face with edge banding to match the rest of the design.

I’m really happy with how this project turned out, and more importantly, my wife likes it too. Finding that compromise on the headboard design made both of us happy. The bed looks great whether the sliding panels are open or closed – they just create different looks that both work well. Beyond looks, this bed has an incredible amount of storage, which is always at a premium in any bedroom.

I honestly think this would be a fantastic first furniture project for someone who wants to start building their own pieces. It’s not difficult, you’ll use it every day, and you can customize it to match your home’s style. If you’re interested in making one yourself, check out the digital build plans here. They’ll walk you through every step, and you can use this blog post video as a reference. If you do build one, please send me pictures – I’d love to see your version! Thanks for being here, now go make something awesome!