Learning to weld.

 I love that I have a whole auto body shop at my disposal!  It comes in so helpful in the projects that I do.  My dad restores old vintage cars for a living and so he has every tool under the sun in his shop.  Since May this year I have made it a personal goal to learn how to weld with a wire feed welder.  I have dabbled here and there with it but I've never done a whole project by myself before.  

So about a month ago my did made another "donation" to the Roost Barn.  A 1985-1990 daybed.  Looking at the thing I thought really?  A day bed what the heck am I going to do with that!  Not many of my friends are looking to buy one they're not really "THE RAGE" these days especially one that's this beat up.  Then I think back to the Molly Mo's show in August when I posted my transformation project on an old baby crib.  Do you all remember that post... it went from old broken baby crib to this:

 

So I thought about this bed frame as a bench and got down to work.  Having the proper tools is essential.

 I actually don't have the pictures of the frame before I started cutting and welding.  I accidentally deleted them.  But here is the frame after I cut it down to size.  I had to cut sections out off the ends of the daybed back so it would be shorter.  Then I had to cut out sections of the sides so that it would be more narrow like a bench instead of a bed.  

  Then I needed to tack weld the bars in place.

 Do to the fact that I am new at this welding thing I needed to grind off some of the weld to make it flat and smooth.

 After welding the frame together I decided to use the rails from the bed as the supports to the wood that I planned on cutting to fit inside the rails.

  Here is a picture of the bench with the wood piece that (my dad) cut to fit.

So after I got the bench together I needed to find something to fit inside the holes that the brass finials were previously in.  (I'm not a huge brass fan and they were dented and rusty in a bad way)

  I did however find some old knobs that were pulled off of a dresser in a previous make-over project.  Just goes to show, never throw anything useful away.

After inserting the knobs in the hole I painted them and did a once over with paint on the whole frame.

Here is how the finished project turned out: