Let me preface this by saying that all of these pictures were taken late at night... which is why Park is in a diaper in all of them! He sleeps in nothing but a diaper because he is so hot natured....
Here is the trundle bed that we originally purchased off of Craigslist. I really wanted something fun for Parker though... so modifications began immediately! (By the way, pretty much every single piece of wood was removed, modified, and re-attached before the build process was over! It still saved us ALOT of time and money rather than starting from scratch though!)
Our first step was to draw out the shape of the toybox (which is the pointed front end of the boat). I was not super precise with this, and just hand drew a pattern onto the back of wrapping paper. We then traced the design onto MDF and Jerod cut it out to make sure that I liked the shape before we went too much further.
Jerod then used a router to cut out another identical shape to this (and cut the middle out of this one). He then cut several 1x2s the height that we wanted the toy box to be and I assembled the frame while he cut the rectangular back piece. He then attached the back and voila! The base of the toybox was done!
We also went ahead and cut out the lid for the toy box (it is slightly larger and more elongated than the actual toybox).
Next, I decided I wanted a higher headboard than most of the other boat beds that I saw on the Internet. We decided to re-purpose the wood from the bed, so we detached the left and right side panels of the bed. Jerod cut off the top piece (with the curve) on each of them, we flipped one upside down, and attached them to each other with 1x2 brackets on the back. You can see the not-so-pretty seam running through the middle, but we finished that off with a piece of trim.
Then came the hard part! Adhering luan (not sure if that is how you spell that) to the outside of the toybox. This was a bit of a chore since the curve was so severe, but Jerod made it work! We had to improvise a little since I was being too cheap to go buy the right kind of bendable wood (not sure what it is called). Ha!
Of course mid-way through, I decided that I wanted a slight modification! Every time I have a new idea, I always ask Jerod, "Can I ask a question?" I am sure this is his cue to roll his eyes, but so far throughout this project he has been a trooper! He has at least managed to turn his back to me before rolling them. Any ways, I decided I wanted there to be a piece of wood that caps the side rails. Most of the boat beds on the Internet had this piece, and I think it makes it look more finished. The only problem was that the existing side rails that we had planned on using were routed, so the top edge was rounded and another board could not sit on it. We don't have a table saw, so we had to wait until we visited the parents to cut the rounded edge off! It only took a few minutes once we finally made it to Tullahoma with the pieces.
Jerod then painted every single piece (with primer, then several coats of white or blue) before re-assembling thee bed. I am pretty sure this was the worst part of the entire project for him!
So here is our $150ish boat bed (it was originally $130, but sand paper and misc. stuff added up)! Not to shabby considering it cost less than 10% of it's store bought counterparts(not even including mattresses)! We still have to paint a blue striped along the bottom and add a few detail pieces... but it is done enough to start putting the room together.
Here is the picture we were kind of going off of. I really like the wood tones... but it would have been ALOT more difficult and expensive to try to match the types of woods and stain, etc. so I settled for paint. I figured I could bring in wood elsewhere in the room.
I would say it is time to take a breath, but we still have lots of projects to finish in the next FIVE weeks! Eek!
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