View from East Tennessee

The Sundry Perils of Bunk-Bedding

February 28th, 2005 at 12:27 am (Humor, Family, DIY Projects)

So Slappy is outgrowing her crib. Ready to move to a big-girl’s bed. But the girls’ room isn’t that big, and the other “bedroom” is being used as an office. So we think, aha!, bunk beds!

Angela starts poking around on the web and ends up at playhousedesigns.com, which is a pretty cool site. It features a bunch of themed bunk and loft beds, and we settled on the Abbyville Collection Bed Loft:

The only problem? Cost: $2795 painted; $1595 primed; $1395 unpainted and unprimed; and $850 for a kit, which I guess includes pre-cut boards and assembly instructions. But I wouldn’t know, because we didn’t buy that.

No, Angela says, hey, the plans are only $85. We can build it. And by saying “we” she of course means me. And I think, hey, with my vast experience in carpentry (none), my great amounts of discretionary time (close to none), and with my extensive collection of tools (I have one of those plastic toolkits with seventeen kinds of screwdrivers and a crescent wrench in it, and a circular saw, which I actually used . . . once), I think, I can do that. And then I utter the two most famous last words ever spoken: “No problem.”

Well, I had to buy a jigsaw. But first I had to figure out what a jigsaw was. A router saw may have been better, but then again I wouldn’t know because I don’t know what a router saw is. And I had to buy, so the plans told me, 7 sheets of MDF board, but of course I did not know what MDF board was. If pressed, I would have said some kind of wood. I also didn’t know, until later, that I would have to rent Home Depot’s truck to get the MDF home. Here’s a free tip — MDF is heavy.

So in only four short weekends, I had cut 21 pieces of MDF board and decided the “D” stood for dusty. I started out trying to use the jigsaw for straight cuts, but, alas, I was not that straight. I then cut some boards using the circular saw, without a guide, and I ended up with the straightest crooked lines I’ve ever seen. Another free tip — use a guide. Measure it, clamp it down, and make sure there’s nothing underneath the cutting line. Oh, and make sure you are not going to have a deadly (but hilarious!) see-saw type chain reaction when you finish cutting through the board. Hint — if the cut is not supported on both sides (but not directly underneath!), the middle will cave in when the cut is complete, and you will be sandwiched by heavy, dusty MDF boards flying at you from both directions. You’ll be squished like a grape, except that grapes generally do not hold smoking power tools. Not that that happened to me , mind you.

So, take the time to set up the cut. Then, start the video camera, and make the cut. It takes ten minutes to set up a cut and ten seconds to cut it, but it’s the best way. Oh, and don’t breathe while you’re cutting or for fifteen minutes afterwards. Alternatively, you can wear a mask. (We now know why Michael Jackson started wearing masks in the 90’s: he was cutting MDF board in his garage.) Dusty! Dusty! Dusty! Had to invest in a shop vac, and in seeing how well it worked, I considered attaching it directly to my face to suck out all the dust I had inhaled. After all, the instructions did not specifically warn against such use.

So I started putting the thing together. The instructions, while decent, were not exactly precise. I’m used to assembling computer desks and things that are made by companies like Sauder that specialize in consumer kits, but only experts and fools try to make something like this from scratch. And if you haven’t figured it out already, I’m no expert.

So I made mistake after mistake, but things finally started to take shape. Here’s me (notice the dust!) hooking the two sides and middle partition together with the loft bed deck.

The most exciting part was getting the gable up. As the next few pictures show, I let the kids get up there and look around at this stage. Hey, they wanted to, and besides, I figured that it was better (for me) if the thing collapsed with them in it instead of while I was underneath it with a sharp screwdriver.

[replacement pictures forthcoming]

Having avoided death or serious bodily injury to this point, I pushed my luck and attached the roof, and once again placed my eldest daughter in imminent peril to test my work . . .

[replacement picture forthcoming; maybe]

. . . and then attached the roof to the bookcase gable.

And, ladies and gentlemen, that’s where we are today. Actually, I put in the bookcase shelves and attached the corbels (is that a wine?) this afternoon, but I don’t have pictures yet. I’ll update this post shortly.

Right after my lung transplant.

The next installment of The Sundry Perils of Bunk-Bedding here.