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DIY Mid Century Style Pet Bed – with a Touch of Star Trek

DIY Mid Century Pet BedA DIY project for dog (and cat) lovers, here’s a VERY easy mid century style pet bed. Which we finished off with Star Trek fabric.  Engage.

This initially was turning into a DIY fail. After assembling the pet bed frame, we first stained it with a dark walnut Danish oil. Yeah… for some reason the wood said no to that, and it came out a splotchy mess. We sanded it back down and tried our go-to stain (Minwax Early American). Again, nope. After sanding it back down again, we said screw it and dug out our favorite Pantone paint and moved on to plan C. In the end, while not what we first envisioned, we ended up loving the bright pop of retro color!

We started with a pre-made little dog pillow pad thing (not the scientific term) from Ross (or maybe Home Goods? It was $10. You’ll see it further down the post). We based our measurements for the bed frame size on that. If you can’t find a dog bed, you could also use foam from a craft store, or even a standard pillow.

DIY Mid Century Modern Dog BedWood. We got an $18 sheet of pine plywood + one extra board to cut down into the base, back, and sides. You can do this yourself or have someone at the home store do it. Basically you are making a little box.

DIY Mid Century Dog BedThe little box. Now just screw it together. We did ours like this (below), but you can probably make it a little prettier. Since it’s the underside/back we weren’t too worried about it. For extra sturdiness, you could also put a bit of wood glue up the seams before you screw everything together.

DIY Pet BedWe got the legs at Lowe’s. They were around $3 a piece, plus another $1-2 for the brackets to hold them in. We taped off the metal parts, and painted them.

DIY Mid Century FurnitureFor the brackets, you can get either flat (so the legs go straight up and down), or angled (so they angle off a bit). We went angled – I know, we’re rebels. As you can see, this is after we painted everything.

DIY Mid Century FurnitureScrew the legs on. Aaaand, you’re pretty much done. If you don’t have the setbacks that we had, this project should be done within a couple of hours.

DIY Mid Century Modern Furniture

What do you think? We are big fans of the mid century modern box style sofa, which was the inspiration for this little pet bed.

Here it is with the pillow pad thing in it, as a cushion. And also a little dog in it.

DIY Midcentury Modern Dog BedIt was definitely missing that touch of geek home decor that we love so much, so we pulled out some Star Trek fabric that we recently bought, to use on the cushion (remember our post on Awesomely Nerdy Fabric? It was there).

NOW it feels more like us!

DIY Mid Century Modern Pet Bed

Sewing isn’t really a strong point for either of us, so we cheated here. If you can sew, this is where you would stitch together a nice removable cushion cover, with a zipper in the back. I’m jealous of you. Instead of doing that, we just wrapped the fabric around the cushion (like wrapping a present), and used fabric-friendly tape to hold the fabric in place. The cushion fits so tightly in the dog bed, that it helps keep the fabric nice and snug. Plus we can still take it off and wash it, or change it out for other fabric.

DIY Mid Century Modern Dog BedHe’s pretty cute, right?

DIY Mid Century Modern Pet Bed

Even our big guy tried to get in on the action:

DIY Mid Century Modern Dog Bed

What do you think of the mid century style pet bed? We’re thinking of making a couple more, as DIY gifts for our pet-loving friends who like MCM design.

Comments

  1. Good stuff. As to why the stain wasn’t working out, that’s one of the challenges of a soft wood like pine. It’s not consistent, so you get splotching. Next time try using a sealer – it’ll help make things much more consistent.

    • Thank you for the explanation! We still plan on making a couple more of these as gifts, and will probably use poplar (which is the wood we normally use for DIY projects). The price of the pine was just hard to pass up!

  2. I love the brightly coloured paint with the fabric you used! I wish I had a puppy or kitty so that I could make one of these beds for them! ^___^

  5. cool project!
    for the big guy, what about gutting an old console tv set?
    remove the top, cut the sides down a wee bit, then add cushions as needed…
    I made one for a dog I used to have(she passed away 3 yrs ago)…

  8. I totally love these! I am thinking it would be great to make it so the legs would be taller to make the beds level with our beds and we could just pull them up close to our bed, like an infant co-sleeper. Our bed is kinda crowded with two dogs.

  13. Love this dog bed. I bought our two dogs NAP ortho mats for xmas this year, then saw your MCM dog bed. Now will be making two of these for larger dogs. Thanks for sharing your idea!

  14. LOVE IT!!!! I have 3 Sphinx cats & am always looking for a bed to lift them off the tile floor-that will take pillows/cushions small & sturdy enough for frequent washing-this is perfect thanks for sharing!

  15. For soft woods like pine, pre-stain makes all the difference. It also seems to make it take more coats of stain in my experience, but the end result is worth it!

    • Hi Amber,

      We got it at Ross. They usually have a big section of them at TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, Home Goods, etc type stores. I bet Petco has some too. 🙂

  18. I love this idea! I read all of the comments though and no one has mentioned keeping furbabies safe from poisoning from the paint used. Wood stain too would be dangerous wouldn’t it? I’m sorry I’m not an expert in DIY just a concerned furbaby Mom. I love the material too, it’s adorable. Thank you for sharing x

    • Hi there! You could use milk paint (which is marketed as being completely non toxic and environmentally friendly), which would also give a nice finish. 🙂

  20. Great project but… The FABRIC?!?!? Where.do.I.get.some????? Please? Share the source?

  21. Love it!!!! I must have some of that fabric. It is awesome! Love the big lab trying to get into the bed. So cute. I hope you made him a big bed for himself, he he

  22. I thought this was such an amazing idea. I have a little elderly pug (13yo) who is loosing the use of her back legs, and is having some incontenance issues.
    She was having a really hard time getting in and out of the standard plastic dog beds, which we used with vetbed fabric, as her back feet would get stuck under the front rim 🙁

    So we used your designs and build her a luxury Dog sofa frame like yours, but without legs, Just little felt pads so that its not directly on the floor.
    We also rounded the front edge so that its bullnosed, and now she just scoots up onto it like its nothing 😀

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