A month or so ago Mrs. Bumpkin found a picture of some Bunk Beds out on the net that she fell in love with. After much debate about buying new beds or building beds and a half a day or so shopping for new bunk beds, we decided to build. And, since we were building, we decided to build beds like the ones she saw with one major exception. We had to lose the slide because it took up too much floor space.

About a week or so ago I sat down with the picture of the beds she liked and sketched out a set of plans making modifications as I went. Once I had decided on a finished plan, I got out a ruler and made a semi-scale drawing (on a legal pad at about 1" per foot, two views). From that plan I was able to generate a list of materials. After a couple of calls to see who had the best price on lumber we headed off to town. We came back with $99 worth of lumber (11 2x4's, 8 2x6's, 2 1x4's, and 2 sheets of ½" plywood) and two mattresses we found at a flea market for $30.

At around 7pm we headed out to Dad's shop armed with my semi-scale plans, set up the saw horses, rounded up a tape measure, carpenter's pencil and square, broke out the power tools, and set about making Bunk Beds. I was measuring, marking, cutting, and drilling and Mrs. Bumpkin was sanding each piece as we went. By about 10pm we had all the pieces ready to layout and put together the two ends of the bed and the ladder. Luckily Dad's shop came equipped with a good supply of 2½ wood screws. OK, I must confess, I made one really stupid mistake. When creating my plans, even though I knew better, I allowed 4" for the 2x4's and 6" for the 2x6's. This mistake became evident when I was laying out the first end. I started at the bottom measuring and marking where each cross piece was to fit. When I got to the top I had 1¾" left on my uprights (I was supposed to come out flush with the top). I immediately realized my mistake and simply adjusted everything up adding a little more space under the bed, no biggy. At this point we re-located everything to the garage (Dad needed the shop the next day) and called it a night.

Bright and early in the morning on Mrs. Bumpkin's next day off we started in again. Once again I was measuring, marking, cutting, and drilling and Mrs. Bumpkin was sanding each piece as we went. By early afternoon I had all the pieces for the main frame of the bed cut and headed down to the shop to make some angle brackets while Mrs. Bumpkin continued to sand. Luckily Dad's shop also comes equipped with a wide variety of scrap pieces of metal, one of which being a piece of thin angle iron just the right size to cut into eight 5" sections. I used the handy-dandy drill press to drill a few holes in each of these pieces and used the handy-dandy bench grinder to round off the corners and clean up the cut edges and drill holes. Viola, eight custom-made angle brackets to connect the side rails to the ends of the bed. Task completed, back to the garage I went...

Arriving back at the garage a few seconds later, I found that Mrs. Bumpkin had completed her sanding and was now in the house asleep on the couch, which was acceptable behavior considering she had worked the night before and hadn't slept in almost 24 hours. I hadn't had much sleep the night before either, but I knew as long as I kept on working I stayed awake so that's what I did. By the middle of the afternoon I had all of the pieces measured, marked, cut, drilled, and sanded and was ready to assemble the bed.

Seeing as how Brandon was also asleep at this time, I enlisted the help of the babysitter (a.k.a. Mom). An hour or so later we had the frame together, the plywood in place to support the bottom mattress, and the bottom mattress in place. Given the earlier mistake in my plans, I was very pleased to find that everything fit together as planned and that the mattress fit perfectly in its place. I was not pleased however to find that my design was lacking in support with respect to end-to-end movement.

By the time we finished assembling the bed, Mrs. Bumpkin was awake again and was very pleased to see the bed together for the first time, Brandon was awake again and was very pleased that he could climb in the bed and jump on it, Little Jerry was home from school and not too sure about sleeping that high off the ground, and everyone was getting hungry. Since I had stopped working and was starting to get VERY sleepy, we decided to call it a day, go find something for supper, and come back the next day to finish the construction phase of the project.

Around 10am the next morning we started in again. Mrs. Bumpkin helped me with cutting the plywood to support the upper mattress and then she, Brandon, and Mom headed off to town to buy fabric. Overnight I had come up with a modification to the plans to stiffen up the design a bit with regard to end-to-end movement. Specifically, I decided to use the 2x4 scraps to make corner braces which would connect the bottom of each bed rail to the end pieces at a 45 degree angle. With my trusty carpenter's square and pencil in hand I headed off to the shop to use the wood-cutting band saw to cut some angles. A few minutes later I had either nearly-identical trapezoids ready for drilling and sanding so drill and sand them I did. The construction phase of the project complete, I decided to give the design its first test. About an hour later Mrs. Bumpkin, Brandon, and Mom arrived back from town with their newly bought $40 worth of fabric to find me snoozing on the bottom mattress. It was very comfy. I got up and we began preparing for the next phase of the project, painting.

Since we have built and/or refinished every piece of furniture in the kid's room, we already had all the paint and painting supplies we needed. However, since we hadn't done any of this building and/or refinishing for over a year, it took us quite a while to FIND all the paint and painting supplies we needed. We were able to find everything though, so late in the afternoon we set about painting the base coat of white. By dark we had all the white painted and decided to call it a day.

We spent a few hours on Mrs. Bumpkin's next two days off painting the other colors and touching up the white and Mom spent the better part of a day measuring, cutting, hemming, and ironing the fabric panels then it came time for the snaps. We decided early in the design process to make the fabric panels removable so that they could be washed. Originally, we had intended on using stick-on Velcro® strips to accomplish this task. However, after calculating the amount of Velcro® needed (approximately 11 yards) and finding out the cost of purchasing said Velcro® (approximately $90), we decided to use snaps (approximately 72 of them costing $12). After spending the better part of three hours setting in the floor hammering on the little snap fastening contraption only to have quite a few of the snaps come back apart due to the fact the fabric was too thick in the corners, we really wished we had gone with the Velcro®! However, once all the snaps were attached, the project was complete. Well, almost...

Have you ever tried to find primary colors to paint something larger than a craft project? If you have, you probably know that about the only way you can find bright primary colors is in automotive and/or implement paint. Since Dad's shop comes complete with a good selection of implement paint, that's what we went with. If you happen to spend much time around farm machinery, you may have already noticed the presence of two familiar colors. Specifically, John Deere Green and John Deere Yellow. There is one minor drawback to using implement paints though. They are oil-based enamels and as such they take a LONG TIME to dry! This is why I say almost. We had to allow time for the paint to dry. Whereas the white latex paint dried in just a few minutes, we allowed almost a week for some of the implement paint to dry and it was still just a little tacky. However, once the stuff does dry it is very good paint.

So, a week or so later, with the paint mostly dry, all that was left was to disassemble the beds, load them in the truck, bring them home, unload them from the truck, and re-assemble them in the kid's room. This whole process took about three hours, but with its completion so came the completion of the project. Well, almost...

We did make one other design change during the re-assembly process. We had originally planned for the ladder to be at the other end of the bed. However, when we got the bed in the room and started putting it together we found that it was a wee-bit too close to the ceiling fan. We found this out rather abruptly when the blades of the ceiling fan hit one of the uprights which form the canopy as we were putting it on. I then rediscovered this fact later as I was stapling the snap-strip on the top of the end piece where the edge of the canopy meets the end of the bed. I first got my arm into the blades and then felt one brush against my hair (almost a had big ouchie!). As it turned out, with the ladder where we originally planned for it, as a person ascended and/or descended the ladder, their head was coming within a few inches of the blades of the ceiling fan, probably not a good idea! So, we simply moved the ladder to the other end of the away from the fan. The fan is still too close to the bed though so we're going to replace it with a smaller fan in primary colors. By now you've probably looked back up at the picture and are thinking to yourself, "What fan? I don't see a fan." OK, I'll confess again, I cheated and edited the fan out of the picture because it didn't look good. If you really must see it though, the original picture is still there.

This brings us up to today. The kids love the beds, Jerry has decided that sleeping that high up is not such a bad thing, and Brandon is already trying to climb the ladder (luckily at 2 he's still a little too short in the legs to make it up). Brandon has discovered that he can crawl under the bed and hide, which may or may not be a good thing considering he has a tendency to get "no-no's" and go hide with them. In all, everyone is pleased and we're very proud of our accomplishment.

This concludes the saga of the Bumpkin-Bilt™ Bunk Beds. I hope you enjoyed the reading. If you did, let me know! Ya see, there are those who think I'm a little nuts for taking the time to type all this stuff out and put it online. Mrs. Bumpkin is included in this group. However, even though I may just be a little nuts, there is a method to my madness. Ya see, I don't actually do this for you to read. My intent is simply to get the story "in writing" while I still remember all the details. My hope is that some day in the future, when my kids and/or grand-kids have these beds, they will wonder just how they came into being. Rather than tell them an incomplete, half made-up, story since I can't really remember all the details, I can point them towards this story and say there, that's how it all happened. However, if you've gotten this far I must assume you've at least enjoyed reading it a little. If so, that's all the better!