DIY Kids Loft Bed That'll SAVE YOU SPACE

My daughter came to us one day and said she wanted a new bed.

Makes sense since her bed was originally her brothers, so it was time to shift things around again and pass her current bed to her little sister, haha!

So we went ahead and started thinking, eventually we came to the conclusion that since she wanted a bigger bed, and has a relatively small room, best idea would be to go with a loft bed, then we could simply tuck her table under the bed which really makes her room feel a lot bigger.

This project took several months to complete, probably could have finished it much quicker, but it is what it is :)

Hope you enjoy reading/watching!

This cutlist and design are for 190x120cm mattress, download the sketchup model and adjust it as necessary.

The entire bed is made out of untreated pine wood

Cutlist and materials:

• Bed frame - 42*194mm (2x8): 2p x 1900mm, 2p x 1150mm
• Slat side support - 42x42mm (2x2): 2p * 1900mm
• Slats - 20*42mm (1x2): 14p * 1200 (Depending on spacing and required weight)

The rest of the bed - 42*92mm (2x4):

• Legs: 4p * 2000mm
• Slat center support: 1p * 1900mm
• Guard rails: 4p * 1900mm, 2p * 1150mm
• Ladder: 4p * 1150
• Corner braces - No specific length, just cut both to the same size, then cut a 45 degree mitre

• Finish: Matt water based varnish
• 190x120mm mattress
• 5m led strip w/ remote

Tools:

• Drill and Driver
• Pocket hole jig
• countersink bit, drilling bits for wood
• Mitre saw / Circular saw
• Speed square
• Random orbital sander
• Measuring tape
• Clamps
• Extra set of hands!
• Level
• Wood glue
• 2.5" Pocket hole screws for soft wood
• Regular wood screws

We've spent a long time planning this bed, this is due to space limitations and everybody (including myself) kept on changing their mind about this bed... anyway, it's always important to plan, that way you know exactly what you're gonna get and how you're going to get it... no surprises at the end of the day.

I've attached the sketchup 3d model of this bed, feel free to use it as you see fit, adjust it to your needs etc..

If you're like me and you cut the wood at one place, and assemble the bed at another place, then don't :)

If possible, do yourself a favour and get that saw to the room where you're eventually building the bed at, or better yet do a dry assembly of the bed (without glue) before moving it to its final destination. I had to carry pieces of wood up and down the stairs so many times, for adjustment of 1-2 mm, very frustrating... I guess it's also due to the fact that the wood was not 100% flat and straight, and had some twists to it.

Anyway, I started by cutting the bed legs and frame, to give me a good base to work on and also to allow me to get more accurate cuts based on actual measurements.

I filled some cracks in the bed frame wood with putty and gave everything a nice sand, before moving on to drilling pocket holes.

For the joints in this bed I used mostly 2.5" pocket hole screws (rated for soft wood), with the exception of regular wood screws for the bed slats and the slat support beams.

I made sure to drill the holes in the side that is not visible, so when looking at the bed from the front you can't actually see any holes, so I didn't need to fill them (well, maybe those on the other side of the ladder, but I don't think I will).

I started by drilling all the holes, once that was done I moved on to connecting the bed legs and the bed frame together, making sure everything was level here is super important for the rest of the assembly!

I assembled some the first pieces on the floor, but once I got to assembling the side pieces, I clamped some scrap wood to help me with holding the bed frame in place. You should probably get an extra set of hands for this part... luckily my wife was around to assist me on this.

The order of assembly was:

• Legs and bed frame
• Slat supporting beams*
• Guard rails
• Slats*
• Ladder
• LED Lights
• Corner braces (added in a later step to fix the wobbliness of the bed)

*Regular screws were used for these pieces

Check out the youtube video for full step by step, if you like these kinda stuff please like and subscribe, and leave a comment if you have any questions.

The assumption here was - if it can carry my weight for an entire night, it will do just fine for my daughter :)

I'm happy to report back that both myself and the bed survived that night, however whenever I moved a little the bed was rocking back and forth, this can you get nauseous real quick :) so later on I added corner braces that made the bed much more solid.

We had a hard time deciding what finish to apply for the bed, opinions shifted from bubblegum pink, to white, to keeping it as natural as possible...

Eventually we went with the natural look, and applied 2 layers of matt water based varnish.

Hopefully this will make it easier to clean the ladder where I suspect most of the guck will accumulate (yuck!).

Since the bed now blocks most of the light from entering under the bed, and the plan was to put a student table there to save some floor space, I laid out an LED strip below the mattress, the process is super simple and most LED strips (if not all?) come with a double sided tape so you can easily attach them to almost everything you want.

To fix the wobbliness, I cut 2 corner braces to 45 degrees, doesn't really matter what length, as long as they both are the same length.

I attached them to the bed with both pocket hole screws and wood glue, I figured since these pieces will be taking most of the pressure from the bed's movement, better add some glue here as well.

What do you think? We absolutely love it, both the simplicity and the fact that it actually does what it was meant to do, which is to save that floor space!

Let me know what you think in the comments, and I'd love it if you would subscribe both here and on my YouTube channel, so you won't miss any of my future projects ;)

Til next time.