How to Make a Cozy Garden Daybed to Enjoy this Summer

Build a cozy garden daybed with lots of pillows

One of guest's favorite spots to lounge in our garden is the pillow-piled daybed on the patio. It's more comfortable than the backyard hammock, and more luxurious than a typical lounge chair. What's more, it was really easy (and cheap!) to build. So, let's take a look at how you can create a cozy garden daybed in your back yard.

Things You'll Need

• Pillows--lots! We used 8 floor pillows for ours, but how many you use will depend on the size of your daybed.
• Bed platform--you can purchase a ready-made daybed platform or build one yourself.
• Sewing machine (optional)
• Sheltered garden area or outdoor fabrics (optional)
• No-sew Velcro (optional)

Instructions

1. Purchase/find/build your daybed platform. For mine, I built it out of a sheet of plywood. For the legs, I attached industrial casters to ready-made legs (which you can buy at most hardware stores). The casters gave the daybed a bit more height, but they also make it really easy to move the daybed around when we're entertaining. I cut the plywood so that the finished size of the daybed is 3 feet by 6 feet, and we have it up against our storage shed so that there's a "back" to it.

2. Measure the daybed and determine how many pillows you'll need. I recommend two-four layers of pillows (the one in the photo has six layers and that's too many for comfort). So, if your pillows are 36" square floor pillows, and your daybed is 3 feet by 6 feet, you'll need two pillows/layer for a total of 4-8 pillows.

3. If the pillows aren't very deep (like those in the photo), stitch them together, end to end for a long strip of pillows. This will keep them from moving around. If they are deep (as with floor pillows), attach no-sew Velcro to each pillow to keep them all together.

4. Pile the pillows on your daybed platform and dive in and enjoy! You'll find this is the favorite spot in the garden for all of your guests, and probably for your pets, too ;-).

Tips & Warnings

• If the pillows you purchased aren't outdoor pillows and you don't want to bring the pillows in each night, recover them in outdoor fabric. It's easier than you'd expect to do this, but will take sewing and a tutorial on sewing pillows.

Resources

• http://www.ehow.com/home-improvement/