Farmhouse Dog Bed – November 2018

We have two miniature Dachshunds and they love to look out the window and try to convince everyone who walks past how big they are with their barks. In our old house we had our living room on the second floor with the couch in a corner up against two windows facing the street. The dogs would sit on the back of the couch all day and watch people and critters pass. In our new house the dogs did not have a great vantage point for sightseeing. The office where they would be spending most of their days had a window that was ~2′ off the floor. I thought this would be a great opportunity to build them a raised dog bed. I designed one in a “farmhouse” style – whatever that means anymore. It has diagonal decorative braces on the sides and is made out of 1 x 4’s, 1 x 2’s, and 1/4″ plywood sheets for the backers on the sides. The base and lid were made from 1 x 12’s ripped down to size and connected via Kreg joints.

I included higher raised corners to hold the dog pillow in place that my wife made for the bed. The bed itself serves as a storage for blankets as well. For the meantime, we used some plastic dog stairs we purchased from Petsmart, supplemented with another fabric box thing since the bed (2′ tall) was too high for the stairs. Otherwise, the bed measured 23.5″ by 37.5″ on the outside corners. Eventually I built some dog stairs that were much nicer and matched the bed.