Scarlett's Loft Bed

For some reason, I decided it would be a good idea to build Scarlett a loft bed. Four factors were happening to cause this.
1. Scarlett is getting too big to fit in a toddler bed.
2. We are trying to potty train Felicity, and she never was very good at climbing out of her crib (Scarlett got her out).
3. We have a new baby coming, so we have to get Felicity into the toddler bed, which means Scarlett needs a new one.
4. Scarlett really wanted a bunk bed, but Kristen was worried about ladders combined with darkness combined with kids, so the ones available weren't great. Also, I built our headboard, so how much harder could a whole bed be?

This took way longer than I thought it would, mostly because I used crappy wood (since I was planning to paint it, and wanted to not spend a zillion dollars on it). Said wood had a lot of twists and bends to it. Not having a planer or a jointer, that left me to learn how to use a hand planer I got at a garage sale. Spoiler alert: it isn't super great for furniture. Long story short, it took a while to get the wood how I wanted it (and it's still not quite how I wanted it). Oh, and have I mentioned I hate sanding?

Anyhow, I found some plans online, modified them, and built the bed. For the stairs, I made my own plans based on similar stairs I'd seen. I built it mostly with 2x4's and 2x6's. I also used 2x2's for the cleats, and 1x2's and 1x4's for the slats and railing on the stairs. The railing isn't painted, because it was done really quickly, and I'll probably replace it with 2x2's later (more sturdy).

Let me know what you think!

I originally wanted to make this easier to take apart, so I drilled holes, bought bolts, etc. Because of the twisted nature of my wood, that wasn't happening, so I abandoned the attempt and filled in the holes. This was the first pass - I filled in smooth and no one can tell now.

Partially assembled (upside down). Kristen helped me get the pieces in the right spots

I later realized that some of the pieces were off significantly, so I had to take them apart and re-attach.

All put together

I painted it fully assembled, let it dry, then disassembled for moving up to the girls' room.

Here it is all painted

I cut slats out of 1x2 and 1x4 wood to support the mattress, then screwed them into the cleats.

Here are the stairs with Felicity for reference. I actually painted these before assembling.
The stairs were made to have nice storage areas underneath.

A shot of the stairs (you might see an unpainted spot at the bottom - I messed up and put the
bottom brace on the front instead of the back, so I had to switch it. I'll do touch-up paint later.

Here is the bed fully assembled with stairs

With kids :)

Kids Area

This post was going to be a little heavy on the words, but I decided instead to do more of a visual blog post, so take a look at this picture. I also included the non-labeled photo, in case you want to see it that way.

Kid Book Shelves

It's been a while since I finished and posted a project. It's not for lack of trying. I'm still waiting for some brackets so I can finish my current kitchen project, and have been trying to nail down what I need for some window treatments. But rest assured, those will be on their way (hopefully) soon.

This project was one that Kristen got from Pinterest. Kid book shelves! Now, as you can see, we have some book shelves already. The white one we picked up on the side of the road (marked "free") and the other one we bought for around $25. But if you know my wife, you know she loves books, and that certainly has been passed along to our kids. They have a ton of books, and they don't fit (well) into our current shelving situation.

The solution was to build some shelves into our kid area (which I realized I haven't blogged about yet - I need to get on that). What someone on the internet realized was that house gutters work perfectly for children's books. Earlier this week, we decided to give it a try.

We used one vinyl 10-foot gutter (purchased for $4 from Lowe's), and measured the area. We have a half wall that is six feet long, and our current book area is about three feet wide. I tried the six-foot shelf by itself at first, to see how we liked it.

We decided it worked, so today I went and got the second shelf, and cut it to match the first one. The four-foot pieces worked perfectly on our other wall (since we didn't need to cover the vent on the floor). Here's how it looks. What do you think?

Toy Room

Scarlett and Felicity have a TON of toys, and we try to keep them corralled as best as we can. We have a room in our house off our upstairs living room that is more like a big closet.

  

When we moved in it was just an empty room, so I decided to add shelves to help make it more useful. I added two shelves initially, and put up board games and some of the bigger toys up there.

First set of shelves

But Scarlett has a TON of princess dresses, and I thought it would be good to hang those up, to make room for other dress-up items in the dress-up box. I also thought that even with the initial shelves, there wasn't a lot of room to play. So...I added two more shelves along the long wall. We also got an extra stepping stool to make it a little easier for the girls to get stuff on and off the shelves. Here is the final product. This picture makes it seem a bit cluttered, but when toys get put away (on the rare occasion), there is lots of space for playing.

Panoramic Shot with all shelves