Place your headboards leaning up against the wall. Push the dowels together. No need to glue.

Then take the metal bracket provided, the screws and your screwdriver and insert the screws into the predrilled holes.

This photo shows how the bed bracket has been moved to the proper position on the headboard and of course on the footboard as well.

The rail end has a matching bracket and a biscuit as well for stability.

Another close up of a bed rail.

Start on the left side of the headboard and place your side rail. The ledge is to the inside. There will be a single scratch on the bedrail and a matching one on the headboard on this left hand side...like so...

The side rails are placed and carefully hammered with a rubber mallet into place. You can feel that they are placed properly if you put your hand underneath. The bottom ledge of the rails which supports the slats and the support on the headboard and footboard will match up.

Place the slats evenly.

You have placed one rail and it will look like this.

Now place the loose end of the side rail into the footboard...

Use your rubber mallet or equivalent to hammer gently down until the ledges are even....

Now assemble the footboards. Push the dowels together then screw in the bracket like so...use the predrilled holes and screws provided.

It will look this when you are done...

Pull the footboards gently so that they stand even. If your floor is uneven, most floors are uneven, place felt under the outer legs to stabilize.

Now place the second side rail, again with the ledge in towards the middle. There will be two scratches on the side side rail which will match two scratches on the right hand side of the headboard...

Then place this siderail loose end into the footboard...

Make sure you hammer it down so that the ledges are even.

Your bed will now look like this...

Now to secure the headboards....

Find a board with predrilled holes. Your screws will be taped to this board. Hold the board with arrow up!

Start on the right and drill the screw all the way through then find the predrilled hole in the headboard and affix...

Then secure this board on the left hand side. Make sure you use the predrilled holes!

Then secure in the middle set of holes. The arrow should be up!

Place the headboard against the wall and place your siderails.

You can see the bracket hardware on both the headboard and the side rail.

Use a rubber mallet to gently place the siderail. Put your hand underneath and you will feel when the siderail support ledge for the slats is even with the headboard and footboards supports.

Place your slats. Completely assembled!

Generally, we replace siderails as a matter of course because the early ones are not long enough for today's modern mattress sizes.

On the twin bed page there are ideas for sleigh rail patterns, otherwise we have straight rails made of new strong yellow pine.

Modifying the bed so that you have a pair of stand along twin beds that can be pushed together for a king bed.

1. Our suggestions for bed modification....

Usually we put the siderails just a bit outside of the headboards/footboards so that we can achieve the 39" space necessary to accomodate an American Twin mattress or box spring. Since you want to be able to snugly push the beds together for a king, we had to come up with another idea and here it is on the right.....

On these headboards we are lacking about an inch to have the necessary space so we though of doing the same thing we often do when we convert a youth sized bed to a twin.

My husband is holding up a stick just as an example, of course we would use a pretty piece of wood to match the bed, but the idea is to enlarge the inside edge of each bed equal to the modling at the base. This would give us just what we need to put on the siderails so that the beds could be snug together and form a single headboard.

Here is the stick against the footboard...

So when we are done there will be an addition to the inside edge of each headboard and we will retain the beautiful molding.

2. Mattress or mattress/box spring combo?

We need to know the thickness of the mattress and box spring you are going to buy. I will try and explain!

Headboard/Footboard

Option One...mattress only

Here my husband is holding the tape measure and the infamous stick. This is an option if you would like a lot of the headboard exposed.

The stick shows the height of a mattress only of a standard 8" sitting on a siderail ledge and slats. You will not be able to use a dust ruffle of course unless you put the mattress on a metal frame, then it would also be harder to move the beds but not impossible if you buy metal frames on rollers, easily available. If you decide to do this we do need to know the height of the mattress because we will want to make sure that the siderail height will be slightly below the mattress height. When you push the beds together you will want the mattresses above the wood of course.

Headboard/Footboard

Option Two...Mattress plus box spring or mattress combo (mattress and box spring in one piece)

These photos of the stick show where a 16" total of mattress plus box spring would be when placed in the siderails on the slats. Again, we would like to know the height of the boxspring because we would make sure the siderails were exactly the same or slightly lower so that you could opt to have a dust ruffle.

Option Three...If you bought a combo mattress/box spring then of course you could not easily have dust ruffle so that is not a good option.

Option Four...the overstuffed puffy mattresses! Please let us know if you buy one of these because generally they are much thicker and also shorter, sometimes narrower too. We will have to size the bed properly for these mattresses. In fact, sometimes they are so much narror than the usual 38" width that we might not have to add on to the headboards!

This is how these beds look pushed together. If you do not want the gap, then I will ask my husband to add on a strip to the inside of each bed.

Then the beds will look like this...

These doweled wood pieces and little caps will fill in the gaps when the beds are pushed together......

It is nearly not visible but pieces of wood have been added to slightly widen the uprights, just enough to make this bed wide enough for a twin mattress.

If it is not enough to add on a small board to an upright, then here is another way to enlarge a bed...

Of course these beds are pushed together and not restored but set apart properly they look wonderful with this kind of enlargment.