A Bed: Buying and Building

Once we returned home from our busy summer, we decided to begin working on building Lucas' bed.
We began with the frame. 

We followed the design on Ana White's website for the Brookstone Twin.

We printed out the list of wood we needed to purchase and headed out with the kiddos. 

I would definitely NOT take you preschool-aged kids to your home improvement store when you need to buy a large quantity of wood.  I am sure you can imagine why....

We won't discuss that. 

What I will discuss is that all the wood, with tax and 10% off coupon, ran us $104. 

You see they were completely out of the 3/4 inch plywood that we needed. 
Of the thicker plywood, all of it was sagging and in poor shape. 

Without knowing if it was a good choice, we went ahead and purchased 3/4 inch MDF. 
We later read that MDF is denser than plywood.

Since we had everything cut in the store (for free and no cleanup for us), we began building immediately.
I promise I really did help.  Richard just didn't take any photos of me!

The original plan called for the cubby supports to be only on the ends.

However, we found that the MDF still sagged. 

We decided to add another 1x12 board down the center and off to either side for extra support.

Although we lost the continuity of the storage space, we eliminated having to crawl through for lost toys!

At this point, we realized that we would need to finish building the bed in Lucas' room.

We also realized priming and painting the bottom would be easier before attaching the top support.

I sanded all the boards!

Then, we primed with a water-based primer.

The MDF really soaked up the primer.

We painted with Valspar's Rich Mahogany - 2 coats.

I wanted to stay more traditional (brown) for longevity - despite Lucas' protests for GREEN!

At this point, we moved it upstairs to Lucas' room to complete.

We added the MDF top support piece and started adding the trim. 

Meanwhile, the kiddos entertained themselves.  I love listening to their pretend scenarios.

Today, it was cold and they were going to play in the snow. 

The snowball fights must have worn them out.

But luckily the nap made it possible to arrive at this point: completion!

Lucas was super excited.

He said it looked like his very own stage!

He and Meredith sang a few songs on the stage for us before we wrangled them for bedtime!

We didn't fill all of the screw holes with wood filler because we wanted to be able to disassemble it in a few years when we move again.

So a few more days of priming and painting!

After several days of letting the paint dry, we also put two coats of polyurethane.

We let the poly dry for about three days before we moved Lucas back into his room.

Lucas was (and still is) super excited about his bed.

Now, I know many of you are thinking, "That was a lot of time and effort!  You spent $100 dollars just on wood. You could have just dropped some cash on a new bed for the kid!" 

I don't owe you an explanation, but I do know a few things:

1) Lucas is VERY PROUD to have a bed that we MADE him.  And he is 3. 

I am happy that he genuinely appreciates when someone does something for him.  I am doing something right.

2) The process allowed Lucas to SEE that things don't just come from a store.  Things are crafted and produced. 

3) The process provided much "bonding" time for my husband and I.  Lucas and Meredith assisted in the building process and even pretended to help with their own tools. 

Stay tuned for more information about the headboard!