It was too cold over the winter to do anything with Charlotte but drive her, so I consoled myself with that. Still, I learned that even though I was missing the entire window unit from the driver’s side door, in the dead of winter the heater plus two dogs were enough to keep me warm.

For Christmas, my kids gave me all the hardware, stainless steel bed strips, carriage bolt kit, to install a new bed in Charlotte. All I needed now was wood.

Some now-obscure owner in this truck’s now-ancient history replaced the original wood in the bed. Despite that she left the factory with what was the Chevrolet standard: 3/4 inch thick wood in the bed, this now-obscure owner decided to make the new bed he was installing one-inch thick instead. This was most likely because he had only one-inch-thick boards available and no planer to change that dimension. To secure his new plan, he welded the angle iron support rails to the bed sides at one inch.

Thus, from then on, everything that had anything to do with the bed had to be adapted to accommodate this new dimension. At every turn in this bed project I was reminded of this unalterable dimension that I had inherited.

One can buy the wood kit from most antique Chevy suppliers, which, depending upon the species, oak or yellow pine, can run anywhere from $450 to $600. He can also use whatever wood he desires as long as he has the machinery to mill it. However, any wood kit he buys is all milled to factory specification: 3/4 inch thick.

I have a good friend who is a superb builder. Around that time, he was working on a ninety-year-old house in North Arlington, VA. To tie the new structure to the old, he had to remove a number of rafters which were cut from sturdy, old-growth southern yellow pine trees, wood well known to be fairly strong. Those he gave to me.

A mutual friend living in our shared neighborhood is a cabinetmaker on the side, so he has a small shop in his back yard filled with quality woodworking tools. Armed with his skill, using his tools, he and I planed the rafters to the right thickness to fit Charlotte. Then, using dimensions I found online, ripped them to the desired widths, shaping and grooving the edges as necessary to receive the metal bed strips.

I carried them all home where they lay for the winter, stacked one atop another upon my workshop floor to keep them flat.

With the approach of warm weather, using my own table saw, I further milled the lumber, making many more adjustments to the various dimensions. It turns out the dimensions I found on line were a good place to start, but I had to make up for those inherent shortcomings myself.

Filling the water-blackened holes where the nails from the sheathing pierced the wood, occasional damage from worms, repairing knots and checks, then a thorough sanding, the wood was finally ready for finish.

There are imperfections in the wood, as there are inherent in the truck, but I was ready for that. In fact, I want the bed to have a sort of weathered, rustic, even imperfect look more befitting the long, hard life, the abuse, the history from which Charlotte is now safely, comfortably retired.

Waterlox marine-grade finish, expensive stuff at $42.50 a quart, was my varnish of choice. In my dismay, with each application of finish, the pink tone characteristic of old yellow pine now took on a more golden hue. I am happy with the result. This wood had spent the last ninety years in a hot dry attic, so it was well dried. The thirsty wood soaked up the first coat of varnish like a sponge.

After that coat dried, concerned I might not have enough varnish for a second coat all around, I painted the back, ends, and edges of each board with two coats of Rustoleum Satin Black paint. That allowed for plenty more varnish for the visible side.

After a total of four coats of marine varnish, I let the lot cure for several days in my workshop. I now have more in the can for regular maintenance coats. This varnish is a fairly-slow-drying finish, so every day over the next couple of weeks it seemed to cure harder to the touch.

Restoring this particular truck, I have learned that when I take some item apart for maintenance or renewal, it does not necessarily go back together the way it came apart. Many would-be, hopeful, but dismally-naïve and incompetent backyard mechanics have monkeyed over the years with this venerable old girl, so I cannot trust that what I am studying at a given moment is in the condition that was intended by the engineers, then rolled off the Chevrolet factory floor in Detroit soon after.

Thank goodness included with this truck is the original Chevrolet shop manual, complete with narrative, pictures, and illustrations. Where narrative, pictures, and illustrations are not available for certain parts and systems, my own logic and common sense, mechanical ability and ingenuity have been my salvation. There have been more than a few occasions when I have been forced by circumstances to manufacture my own parts for her from scratch.

In building the bed, the only stock item I could use from my Chevy supplier, the only thing even resembling the original, were the stainless steel bed strips. With thicker wood in the bed, the bolts supplied with the bed kit were now too short. I found a hardware-and building-trade-tools-and supplies merchant in town who ordered lengths of bolts for me that would suit my application. The washers and nuts from the kit I could use, so now I was set.

So, on a late-spring day, wood dry, finish cured, bolts and washers and nuts, tools, work clothes at the ready, plenty of Cutter to stave off mosquitos, I set about assembling my bed. It took two full days in my case because nothing on my truck is standard. In fact, as I mentioned, even the dimensions I found online themselves needed to be modified to make the finished product look and fit right. This truly is a custom bed.

Suddenly, no longer can I just bound over the bed sides to reach things underneath. Because someone has dreamed up this bright idea of installing a bed, I now had to crawl underneath the truck, tools in hand, no less, just to install washers and nuts, then to tighten those washers and nuts, of which there are many, several near impossible to reach with any tool other than my two index fingers stretching around one on either side of the truck’s frame. I tightened those few difficult nuts incrementally with my two fingers as a friend tapped gently on each bolt head from above with a hammer against a small block of wood.

In fact, any future work underneath the truck will require the aforementioned crawling under, tools in hand, to accomplish it. I’m beginning to think I should have installed this wood bed on hinges, lift up the wood and jump in, were this bed truly not already a custom fit in every sense of the word, as well as an enormous expenditure of effort. So far, I have received nothing but accolades about Charlotte’s new bed.