Resizing an Antique Bed
When you climb into an antique bed for the night, you wrap yourself in a bit of history. You imagine the many people it’s nurtured, the whispers it’s heard, the romance it’s seen. And you can’t help but imagine how much more comfortable you’d be if your feet weren’t colliding with the footboard, if your arm wasn’t dangling over the side.
So antique beds aren’t perfect. Sizes weren’t standardized until this century, and old beds - commonly three-quarter size - are usually too short or narrow for modern mattresses; they don’t take a box spring. And they’re usually a little rickety from decades of use. “A bed could have gone through five different lives before it comes to us,” says Jeff Jenkins. Nineteenth-century four-poster beds are our specialty and our staff resizes almost all of them to conform to modern standards, before putting them on the showroom floor. You can also bring your own bed to us for restoration. We work wonders with old wooden beds, making them wider and longer, turning three-quarter-size beds into doubles, doubles into queens, and joining twins to make a king.
This might sound like it contradicts what you’ve always heard about antiques - that you shouldn’t alter them in any way, that doing so will make their value plummet - but many experts agree that beds are an exception to that rule. This is because a bed, unlike a table or bureau, can’t be readily enjoyed without these changes. In fact, according to Bruce Newman, president of Newel Art Galleries, an antiques emporium in New York City with about two hundred and fifty beds in stock, resizing can even enhance the bed’s value. “A bed is a functional object, and if it’s not adapted, it can’t be used”. There are, of course, exceptions to the exception. Newman says any bed worth more than $15,000 or $20,000 probably shouldn’t be altered. At the other end of the spectrum, every flea-market bargain may not justify the effort (you should start with a good quality piece of furniture) or the expense (costs range from several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the extent of the work).
Some designs lend themselves to resizing better than others. Wooden four-posters similar to the ones pictured on our website are particularly good candidates. Their most decorative elements are the turned posts, which needn’t be altered when enlarging the bed. The headboards are flat, not elaborately carved or embellished, making them easy to replace or extend. The side rails and cross rails were purely structural, not ornamental; the large evenly spaced holes you see were for the ropes that were woven between the rails, forming a support for a mattress of straw, horsehair, or feathers.
Beds with curved headboards or footboards (as on sleigh beds), curved moldings, or intricate carved work are more of a challenge, since it’s difficult to match these parts or make unobtrusive additions. But don’t lose heart; “never say never”, says Lois MacDonald, vice president of Sales and Marketing at Leonards, explaining that there may be elements from the footboard, for example, that can be taken and inserted on either side of the headboard. And with many beds it’s possible to eke out a few more inches, allowing a three-quarter-size bed to take a double mattress without making any significant structural changes.
There are several ways Leonards resizes beds, depending on the bed itself and the result the owner wants. Each piece is approached individually, but there are basic techniques that we follow. When you’re considering adapting an antique bed - or buying one in the first place - it’s useful to know today’s standard mattress sizes. A twin is 39 by 75 inches; double, or full, is 54 by 75 inches; queen is 60 by 80 inches; and king is 76 by 80 inches. Three-quarter-size mattresses, 48 by 75 inches, are still available, but not very popular today.
They were popular in the last century, though, and the conversion from a three-quarter-size bed to a double can be an easy one. In general, a mattress should fit within the side rails, but an alteration like this one, it can actually rest on top. If you measure from the outside of one of the side rails on a three-quarter bed across to the opposite rail, you’ll often gain the extra inches you need for the width of a double mattress; however, the bed is likely to be too short. To fix this, the length of the side rails is extended, a minor change: a new piece of wood is added at one end or in the center and stained to match. Then a wood lip is added inside the rails all the way around, just below the top; this supports a plywood platform flush with the tops of the rails. Now you can lay a double mattress on the plywood (but you can’t use a box spring). This is one of the least intrusive - and least expensive - ways to resize a bed, but it’s not perfect: the mattress may overhang the edge a bit - fine for a guest room, but maybe not for sleeping on every night.
For a queen- or king-size mattress, the work is more elaborate. When a bed is made larger, new pieces need to be added, which may also mean losing some of the old pieces, but it is a Jenkins’s philosophy to keep as much of the original wood as possible. And when adding new parts, we may actually use old wood, culled from our vast collection of antique bed parts. The beds are always reassembled using the original method of mortise and tenon joinery.
Pairs of twins can be transformed into a king-size bed. The technique is appropriate even for the most ornate beds, since you’re not adding new pieces, but make sure your twins look great when placed side by side. The beds’ design dictates how they will be joined, but the process often involves losing one of the headposts and footposts so that there aren’t two butting clumsily in the center of the new bed. And in most cases, the side rails will need to be replaced or extended.
When you’re looking for an old bed, antiques stores may not actually be your best sources. Many dealers don’t carry beds at all because they take up too much room and because the market for beds just isn’t as strong as for other furniture. In addition to specialty stores, estate sales and auctions are well worth combing for beds (and don’t forget to check relatives’ attics and basements). When you find one you love, you may pleasantly surprised by the price tag. Antique beds can even cost less than a good reproduction; they start at about $3,500 and many are less than $5,000.
And if you have it resized, it won’t just be more comfortable to stretch out in, but it will probably be sturdier, as well; during the restoration process, Leonards makes sure the piece is ready for several more generations of use. “A bed has to be sound. It can’t squeak or creak”, says Jenkins, who guarantees his beds for as long as you own them. “I figure that’s safe”, he says, “because they’re already been around for a couple hundred years.”
Originally published in Martha Stewart Living, October 1998.