Bunk Bed

When Jade's birthday was coming up, I knew that we would want to move her out of the crib and into a bed. We already had a toddler bed that Greta has been sleeping in since her 2nd birthday, but I decided that I wanted two twin sized beds instead of one twin and one toddler in their room. The only problem is that the girls share a room and their room isn't huge. I measured it out and realized that two twin beds would take up most of the space. blech. So, I thought that maybe a bunk bed would be better, but there's a ceiling fan right in the middle of the room and I didn't want Greta getting hit by it every time she climbed into bed.

My solution came from my new favorite website, Ana White. Ana draws up free building plans for pieces of furniture and shows step-by-step how to make them. The great thing is that you can easily modify them to fit your own needs. I decided that I was going to build a bunk bed for Greta and Jade. I started with her plan for the "Classic Bunk Bed", which looks like this: (The bed is actually made up of 4 different panels that bolt together to form the bunk bed)


I needed it to be a little shorter because of the issue with the fan. I ended up just leaving off the legs, so that the bottom bunk was directly on the ground. That way, Greta's bed wouldn't be quite so high up and I wouldn't worry about Jade rolling off of hers. It took me 2 1/2 weeks to build since I really could only work on it after the girls were asleep, but I am so excited with how it turned out!

Here are some progress pictures:








The best thing about this is that it cost me less than $150 for all of the lumber, paint, screws, etc, which is WAY cheaper than any bunk bed that I could have gotten at the store- even if I had bought a Wal-Mart bunk bed. And I have the satisfaction of saying that I built it all by myself!