Cardboard Chaise Lounge

Step 5 Cut the pieces for the front and back beams

We will first make the front and back beams. With these two beams you can get the frame and beam structure started. It's helpful to begin to see the couch take shape and make any adjustments if needed to your pieces or method. (For example, we learned a trick to make the beams more visually attractive which I'll share below)

First break down a box so that it can be laid our flat.

The front beam is 20.0 x 5.0 x 1.5 (in) . To form this beam cut approximately 12 rectangular sheets that are 20.0 x 5.0 (in)

The back beam is 20.0 x 23.5 x 2.0 (in). To form this beam cut approximately 16 rectangular sheets that are 20.0 x 23.5 (in)

You will be cutting lots of these beam sheets. It's helpful to find a good straightedge like a yard stick or as you may notice in my photos we used a whole foods catering tray that I pulled out of the trash :)

Also we wanted to avoided having creases in our sheets, so we cut off flaps and stray pieces to leave a nice rectangular sheet of cardboard. Don't recycle those scraps just yet! We will reuse them in later steps!

Tip: When we cut the rectangular pieces we cut the edges so they aligned with the corrugation pattern of the cardboard. When you cut a rectangular piece you will notice that two adjacent sides have a different appearance when viewed from the side. One side reveals the zigzag pattern. The other side, the non-zigzag side, will look more like two sheets of paper with a small gap in between. I would recommend cutting your 20 dimension so that it is the non-zigzag side. This will make the edge that people see show the zigzag patterns. It looks cleaner and perhaps aesthetically looks stronger than the non-zigzag pattern.