Old Bed: Restoration or New Projects?

[Hank Knight]

I have what appears to be the identical bed. It belonged to my mother shen she was a child, so it has significant sentiumental value to my family. It was old when her mother bought it (they hauled it home in he rumble seat of a Model T Ford), so I have no idea how old it really is. Many of the joints were loose and various dogs had cut their teeth on the bed's feet. I cleaed, reglued and pegged the joints and reshaped the feet as best I could. Fortunately, the mechanical connectors between the bed posts and the rails were in good shape. A little light touch-iup with fine steel wool and wax was all that was needed to bring the finish up to satisfactory condition. The whole thing turned out well and the bed is now resident in our guest room.

Your bed is in much worse condition than mine was. You could probably save it, but it would require a lot of work and some thinking-out-of-the-box to save the legs/feet. I'm with the others who recommend against a full scale effort to recondiion it, especially since you have no burning desire to do it and it has little, if any, sentiental value to your family. If you have woodworking friends nearby, you might offer it to them as a project piece. Someone might enjoy redoing it. If not, there are lots of options from trashing the whole thing to breaking it down into smaller components and building something else with the pieces.

Goodf luck with it.

[BaileyNo5]

Well, the deed is done.  I do admit to feeling guilty as I pulled the ol' girl apart.  But it was the right decision.  It was extremely dirty, had water damage, some rot in the feet.  All glued and nailed, not a single screw in it.  The glued joints fell apart pretty easily with a little coaxing from a dead blow hammer.  Cut nails of course.  Thanks for all the input.