Sweet Pea bunkbed part 5--The finale!

The story until now:  Part 1--front and side panels, Part 2--stairs and shutters ,Part 3--pergola and window boxes, Part 4--drawers and cubbies.

Well its been a long saga, but the bed is finally FINISHED!!  Only took us 10 months lol.  So much for thinking we could have it done in 4 weeks, silly us. 

My son asked us to bring the bed over while my DIL and granddaughters were out of town, so that it would be a surprise on their return.  He borrowed a van from his work, which was really much, much better than hauling it over in the purple truck.

Made sure to cover everything with sheets/blankets.  I'm totally done with touching up the paint for the umpteenth time.  

Got everything inside!  Only needed one trip!

Unloading

This is that long, narrow hallway we knew we were going to have to maneuver.  This was the reason for making the front and back panels separate into two pieces. 

Looking the other way down the hall, you can see that you have to get around that corner to get into the bedroom. 

Grandpa and daddy putting the bed together.  Nice to have my son helping this time, so all I had to do was take pictures :-)

The final pictures!

Hard to see the whole bed at once because the bedroom is just too small to be able to get it all in. We bought some small battery-operated LED puck lights that we installed on the top and bottom bunk that really helped as far as lighting.  Then my son and DIL added the Christmas lights as well. 

Its a stuffed animal explosion on the top bunk!

"You're taking a picture of my stick-on tattoo right?  Because that's what I'm going to show you"



We had originally planned to add a slide next to the stairs and we have the materials as well as a plan, but my son and DIL asked us to wait on that, the bed takes up most of the room as it is.  Maybe at some point they will have more room and we can add the slide.

Looking back I have to say we had a great time making this bed.  The lack of a place to build was a significant barrier, as well as our busy lives working, family, and volunteering for our church.  There were weeks/months when it just sat and we couldn't work on it at all, so it dragged out for months longer than we had anticipated.  However the end result was pretty awesome, and it should be around for years to come.  

Sweet Pea Bunk bed--Part 4 drawers and cubbies

If you missed what has happened to this point, here is Part 1--front and side panels, Part 2--stairs and shutters, Part 3--pergola and window boxes, Part 5--the finale!

Alright, here is the next-to-the-last post--the drawers and the cubbies.  This is the post where I admit I got a little carried away and Rusty had to step in and rein me in.  As you can see we have gone from winter to summer--about the end of April/beginning of May our other obligations interfered and were were not able to work on the bed again until the end of August.  So it sat.  In the way. 

Starting with the easy stuff--the cubbies.  In part 1, I mentioned that we made the bed wider so as to be able to add shelves/cubbies in the bed itself. 

This is the one for the upper bunk.  Fits around the windows.



I debated on having all the boxes open, but then figured "why not?"

The upper shelves installed

For some reason I don't have a lot of pictures of the lower shelves.  But they are pretty straightforward. 

The final product--plus granddaughter detritus.



So the drawers.  The main thing we added was to have some drawer guides drop down from the lower bunk slats.  We had a bed for my son at one time that had drawers that went underneath, but no guides, etc.  The drawers were always bumping into each other and were a pain to fit.  Seeing as these are so large, I didn't want them getting off track. 

We dropped this board down from the bed slat above.  We ended up adding some 1x2 "runners" on the bottom of the 1x6 as further guides. 

You can see how the drawers move along the guides.

So the drawers themselves.  What can I say.  I just kept painting lol. 

Stenciled this design on the side of one of them. 



The beginning of the grass design. 



I wanted the trays to be pretty and functional as well.  Took some figuring out but ended up using the router to make slots so that I could add dividers into the trays. 

This ended up not being the easiest thing to do, as to get the slots to line up you have to be pretty exact in your measuring, and I admit I wasn't the best at that.  But brute force works on a lot of things lol. 

The end result of the drawers/trays.  I made each tray slightly different, from large boxes to small boxes.  I figured little girl clothes you could use the ability to separate tiny underwear, socks, etc.  One thing I did that I forgot to take a picture of is on the lower part of the drawers (the part under the trays) I made a divider about half-way back from the front.  These drawers are really long (like 5 feet) and I didn't want important items in the front migrating to the back of the drawer.  So the divider splits the drawer into two part--the front for frequently used items, and the back for storage of items used less often. 

I finished off the front of the doors by adding these wood cut-out shapes.  I purchased them at a variety of places--JoAnn, Michaels, and Hobby Lobby.  Some of them were already painted, and initially I thought that would be great and save me some time, but when I put them together I didn't really like the quality of the painting and they didn't exactly match my color pallet so I ended up painting over them. 

The grass is all stenciled.  I like how it turned out. 



The drawer pulls are plastic jewel-looking pulls I ordered off Etsy.  Pink, blue and purple.  If you look closely at the pink flower under the blue dragonfly, you can see that the drawer pull came off the mount.  So we glued it back on with some E6000 glue.  That happened the first night when an excited granddaughter stepped on it. 

Overall I'm very happy with how the drawers turned out.  I had all these ideas of adding other touches to the bed itself (painted flowers, etc) but luckily I ran out of energy and Rusty ran out of patience. 

We also added these clear plastic bumpers to the drawer between the front of the drawer and the tray.  After I waxed up the tracks for the trays they were moving pretty quickly up and down their track and I was worried about little fingers getting pinched. 

One of the drawers in use.

So that's the drawers and the cubbies! 

Sweet Pea Bunk bed part 3--Pergola and window boxes

Continuing on.  Here is a link to Part 1--front and side panels, Part 2--stairs and shutters, Part 4--drawers and cubbies,  Part 5--the finale!  

Moving on to the pergola and the window boxes.  The window boxes were pretty straight-forward, however we did build boxes for both the upper and the lower windows--again, sister wants window boxes on her windows too!!

Had a heck of a time deciding on what paint color to do the boxes.  Started out dark pink, then ended up with this green teal color.  Still not sure I love it, but it will do. 

At this point the window boxes just sat around, being uninspiring.  I tried another paint design on them and didn't like it.  I also didn't like how much the pink still showed through the teal, so I sanded them pretty much all the way down and started over.  But basically I put them aside and worked on the drawers, etc.

Now we jump forward a few months to when the bed is finished EXCEPT for these dang window boxes.  I finally decided to take some of the wood flower/butterflies from the drawer fronts and use them on the window boxes.  That turned out OK.  I'm happy with it I guess.

I'm also thinking--"What's the point of window boxes with NO FLOWERS?  You need flowers, right?"  I want to figure out a way to get a nice flower arrangement in the window boxes, while at the same time being realistic about the harsh world occupied by "things that are played with by children".  I didn't want to put anything in permanently, because in a couple of years (or months) it would be all torn up and ratty looking.  I came up with the idea of making some drop-in boards that would hold the flowers but be removable.

Got a couple of bunches of silk flowers from the thrift store, then snipped them apart and re-made them into these small "nosegays".

Made these little platforms that drop down into the window boxes themselves.  Rope handles to make it easy to get them out again. 

Here you can see how they fit inside the boxes.  Sorry for the blurry picture!

Now slipping the stems of the little bunches into the holes.

Final picture--upper bunk windows.

Lower bunk windows.

Now the pergola.  This is a problem, since because we changed the design to allow the sides of the lower bunk to open, we can no longer use the original supports, which were underneath and attached to the sides.  I thought for a long time how to adapt it, I didn't want to leave the pergola off, since it is one of the cutest parts of the bed!  Finally we settled on supporting it from above with chains.  One thing we did was to make sure that all the chain/bolts/connectors we used were rated for 200+ pounds, since we all know that if you build it, they will climb on it. 

We notched these to fit on the 2x4



We used large lag screws to bolt them in. 

Here you can see the round two on the window boxes.  I ended up changing that paint design. 

I ordered these eye bolts with the nut caps online. 

Not all the chains are perfectly taut.  We should have put the chains on first and then marked where the eye bolts go.  Oh well, live and learn. 

That seems like enough for part 3.  On to the next-to-the-last post, Part 4, Drawers and cubbies!