Don't be scared,
Do It Yourself!

My last three weekends have been spent in my basement workshop building beds for my three kids, and it was so much fun I thought I'd share my experience and see if I can encourage you to have a go!

On the left is Molly's bed, the first one I did. I found that each bed I made got a little better, but Molly's is still very cool, and of course is painted in her preferred white pink and purple.

Have you spotted what makes it easy yet? Yes, it's all 2x4!

Perhaps we have strange taste in furniture, but Tara and I love the "shabby chic" look, where we paint furniture a strong solid color like dark pink, then paint over with white and sand off a few corners so that the pink shows through.

It ends up looking like old furniture, especially because we make it from plain old 2x4. You should see the faces of the Home Depot guys when I go up there for another 40 lengths and tell them I'm building more furniture.

Rule #1: It's a good excuse to buy tools!

The first things I built I would cut the joints by hand, but that wasn't going to happen with these beds. For a start the slats under the mattress sit in a groove running the full length of the bed which would take a weekend on its own with a saw and chisel!

So, I found a really nice router and table at Home Depot for $99. It saved a LOT of time, and of course the joints are all now perfectly tight and square. Mmm, mmm.

The cut-out on the desk was inspired (!) - since the desk was too wide for the kids to use, and now they sit inside the desk and can reach almost all of it. The plan is to put their computers at the wide end, so it worked out perfectly.

I guess I can build these beds now in about 8 hours from scratch, and it's fun. Total cost? A little less than $100 a piece, and to my mind, just as nice as the $2,000+ loft beds you can buy out there.

Strong enough? You bet. I weigh 270 and get up there with my kids every night to put them to sleep (I need my nap time too with the hours I work!) You'll notice there is no cross-bracing though - generally you need it, but I screwed the beds straight into the studwork in the walls making it creak-free.

Update: A lot of people have asked me for the plans, but I never had real plans! I just made a sketch on a piece of paper and took measurements from a desk and bunk bed to get the heights.

To be honest, I'm not sure I would post my plans even if I had them. I am quite happy building a bed for my own kids, but I'm not taking any responsibility for yours!

Having said that, here are some photos of some details of the bed. You'll be able to get everything you need from studying these...

You can see here how most of the joints are done.

I used my router to cut a groove in the upright, then slotted in the horizontal piece and put two 2" wood screws through from the back.

The ladder is attached by screwing straight into the horizontal piece that it rests on. The screws were countersunk and the holes filled with wood putty.

More detail for the ladder.

A 1.5" hole saw cut the holes for the 1.5" dowel to go through, then two very thin nails were used through the back into the dowel to fix in place.

Rungs on the ladder were 11" apart, but this obviously depends on your child.

Here's a plan of the ladder dimensions.

Moving to the left of the ladder now, my smallest child's bed has half of an end on it.

My two eldest daughters beds do not (and they don't have the wall-side rails shown above either).

From underneath now, you can see how the whole base was made.

I routed a channel the whole length of the base side bars, then slotted in the cross pieces that the mattress sits on. I only screwed the wall-side of these cross pieces to the side rails so there were less holes to fill.

I used 3" decking screws throughout (very nice, and come with their own special screw bit which is awesome) except where there was too little wood to use these long screws.

Here is the front leg, desk top and cross piece to tie the front and back legs together.

The leg was screwed to the cross piece, and the desk screwed down into the cross piece.

The desktop was a nice piece of 8x4' sheet that needed very little sanding. I wouldnt recommend using cheaper ply which will splinter.

This alone cost around $30 a sheet.

On a different bed, but here is the wall-side of the desk top, showing the back piece too.

It was only notched a little way into the cross-piece, but when screwed together is very strong (all the weight is downwards)

Lastly, here is the bottom shelf on one side.

The front and back of all the shelves were done the same way; slotted into a groove and screwed through.

The legs (same as ladder bars) went through holes in shelves, and a hole drilled through the edge of the shelf into the leg where it was closest to the edge and then screwed.

It didn't got through the desk top, but instead was screwed down through the desk top.

Have fun and don't be scared to have a go!!