[Cautrell05]

After I got the boards cut to width and length, not fun when you have never installed a wood bed, and changing the number of boards affects spacing, I pulled the box off and put it on jack stands. At that point there was just 4 bolts and gravity and I had an overhead crane.
Based off the stripe width I started laying out the blue. For those that take American flags really seriously, yes there is only 11 stripes and I don't know how many stars there are but I know there is not 50. But if you take a picture of the bed crop out everything but the flag and lay it on top of a picture of a full flag it matches up if that makes sense. The red boards in that area got VERY lightly sandblasted with a small handheld blaster to try and even out the color. I spent probably two hours at home cutting out stars while I watched TV. Then it was at least an hour of laying stars out, measuring and adjusting. My laser level got used a lot for that. OCD didn't help me there. When I finally decided they were close enough I stapled them down masked off the border and then put down three coats with the airbrush of mostly water with just enough transparent royal blue to tint the area but not cover completely. My end goal was to try and make it look like it has been there for years. Not days.
After that the bed strips were next. I got lucky and one of the parts trucks out back had a couple decent bed strips since I went from 9 to 11 boards. For the bolts I used new carrige bolts, sand blastet the zinc off of the top and then dipped the very top in fertilizer to help them weather in a little better.
The end result turned out really well. I had a lot of people did not believe that at the time that Bedford only been in there for 2 weeks. We'll see how well the blue holds up if I have to touch it up or recoat it next summer. But for the most part it sits inside.