A sturdy dog bed built for Rottweilers designed to look good and slide in/out under a King sized bed.
The project
When we first moved into our new home, we wanted to give our Dogs an alternative to sleeping on our bed at night (they frequently switch between our bed or the floor). My wife made a bed, and while it is sturdy and also slides under the bed, it was difficult to make and has some notable flaws. Now that our new Rottweiler Rollo is approaching 60kg, we decided to make a second one just for him to use. This project was the perfect excuse for us to venture out for the first time with my 8 day old first born, I hope he enjoyed his Bunnings adventure.
The Tools
Nothing major, all I needed for this was:
- Measuring Tape + Marker
- Ryobi 305mm Dual Bevel Sliding Mitre Saw
- Ryobi 18V ONE+ HP Brushless Compact Drill Driver
- Ryobi One+ 18V 82mm Rebate Planer
The Materials
- 1x (1200 x 600mm) 3mm Melamine White ($11)
- 1x Rust-Oleum 340g 2X Ultra Cover Paint+Prime Flat Black ($15)
- 1x Zenith 6G x 30mm Zinc Plated Hinge-Long Thread Countersunk Head Timber Screws - 100 Pack ($7)
- 2x Prestige 125mm Brass Metal Case Handle ($14 total)
- 1x 184 x 19mm 2.4m Dressed Pine ($30)
- 1x 184 x 19mm 1.2m Dressed Pine ($15)
- 1x 42 x 19mm 3.6m Pine ($15)
The Build
(Note) As the base is already of size, it doesn't need cutting.
Step 1 - Cut the Pine to the required size, for me this was having 2x 1200mm long pieces of pine and 2x 562mm for the ends.
Step 2 - Place the cut pieces of Pine onto the base and create the box, drill some pilot holes and then use the screws to Bind everything together.
Step 3 - Now cut the 42mm pine to size within and place it flat, it should look like the image below. Drill more pilot holes and begin fixing the 184 pine to the 42 pieces and the 42 pieces to the base.
Step 4 - The Dog Bed should be pretty solid now, but we're going to flip it over and drill some pilot holes that go from the base into the 184 pine, this will ensure everything is together. I've marked out where I placed the nails in the image below.
Step 5 - At this stage I would cover the screw holes if you wanted to conceal them, I didn't. But, I took this moment to plane the edges, just because I had images of my son hitting his head on the hard surfaces in the future.
Step 6 - Time to paint! Flip it again so that it's the right way up. I only needed the one Spray Can for this one with an even coat around and inside of it. Once the paint is dry, figure out where you want the handles to be and place them on. These are strong enough to carry the box around, but is only used to slide the bed in and out.
Give it a day outside (where it can't get wet) to get rid of the spray paint smell and you're done!
The bed itself looks great. I've used 3 memory foam pillows inside to form the dog bed (our dogs prefer these over actual dog beds) and a blanket the dogs lay down on out in our lounge room (so it has a similar smell). Luna, the smaller of the two, instantly claimed it once I set it up.
Though Rollo later claimed it back once it was set up. He loved it.
The unpainted Melamine base makes pulling the bed out and back in a breeze on carpet.
Bed Pushed in
And yeah that's really it. Really happy with how this turned out.
