We Made our Bed

No, I don't mean that we put on sheets and spread a duvet.  We bought boards, screws, nails and paint, and actually built a bed.   Thanks to Ana White at Knock-off Wood who provided the plans.

The bed is a "knock-off" of this bed at Pottery Barn.  I loved the bed, but wasn't going to spend almost $1000 for it.  I thought a daybed would really help out our toy room, and make a great guest bed.  Our toy room previously had this:

A couch we got off craigslist when when we moved here.  We were able to sell it on craigslist for the same cost of the 3 plywood boards ($100).

We built this over the course of a couple months.  It was mostly built within a few weeks (working for an hour here and an hour there in the evenings) and then sat unfinished for several weeks.

 We finally painted it last Monday.

The kids love climbing into the boxes.

And before I could get the mattress on, Noah and Olivia decided it would also make a great playing space: 

This was a really fun project to work on.  Sam and I would build in the evenings after the kids were down for a night.  The bed consists of 3 boxes, which you then frame with 1X2's and 1X4's.  I think we built 1 box per evening, and then it took a couple evenings to frame the whole thing.  We got the plywood boards at Lowe's, where we got them cut to size.  We quickly learned that we had to measure their cuts, to make sure they were accurate, to save a trip back to the store.  The trim was all cut by yours truly. With a hand saw and a miter box.  Yes, my arm and shoulder were pretty sore the next day!  The plans call for a cubby divder in each box, to divide the space into 2 cubbies, but since the bed is going to be against a wall, we didn't want to loose that storage space, so we left it out. Now the whole space can be accessed from the front.

I found plans to make fabric covered boxes.  I just increased the size of the pattern to the size of the cubby openings, and made them 20 inches deep.  I found some fun home dec fabric at Joann Fabric, and I just love how these turned out.  They were a bit tricky to sew, being so large.  The top edge is sewn through the cardboard, and it took both Sam and I trying to balance and feed the huge boxes through my machine to get them sewn together.  But it was definitely worth it.

Here's Sam working hard to nail on the trim.  There were moments when we really wished we had a nail gun. Maybe someday...

After sanding a bit by hand, we decided that a power sander would be a very good idea.  It made the sanding much easier and faster.  

I'm still working on making pillows for it.  I've made 3, but would like to make a few more,  Right now I just have a bunch of spare guest pillows on there.  The bedspread I got at home goods,and I based all the colors for pillows and the boxes from that.

Now for the cost.
3 Sheets of plywood = ~$100
Trim wood = ~$50
Screws = ~$10
Wood glue = ~$3
Nails = ~$3
Paint/rollers/brushes =~$45
Fabric for boxes = ~$40
Fabric for Pillows = ~$10
Bedspread/pillow Sham = ~$30
Mattress - Free
TOTAL: $281 (which includes all the bedding and the fabric boxes)

We also built this for our kitchen (also from Knock-Off Wood): 

It's a "recycling center" much like this one from Pottery Barn.  We use one side for trash, and one side for recycling.  It's been great having the extra counter space.  And it looks so much nicer than have a trash can out.  

This also sat unfinished, for even LONGER.  I just don't like the whole "finishing" part of building furniture.  

This was our first project, and we learned a lot as we went.  I'm excited to build some more things someday (Ana has SO many great plans - I have a long wish list of things I want to build!), but I think we'll be taking a little break for now.