First there was "Moby Deck." And now...
The challenge: three kids and two bedrooms. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the twins--a boy and a girl--share a room now, but won't be able to in the future. On the plus side, our oldest likes sleeping in their room on occasion.
The challenge: three kids and two bedrooms. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the twins--a boy and a girl--share a room now, but won't be able to in the future. On the plus side, our oldest likes sleeping in their room on occasion.
The solution: Bedzilla, a three-level bunk bed. We began work the Monday after Christmas, a week off from work for both of us. The construction process itself wasn't so bad. But some little amenities added time. For example, my wife wanted a really nice "ceiling" for the two lower beds, so she painted clouds.
During the week, of course, we have no spare time. So after that first week, we were relegated to working Saturday and Sunday, often laboring solo so that one of us could spend time with the kids, lest they watch TV for eight hours while we constructed it.
It was a slow go.
It was a slow go.
But it's done. We still have a few odds & ends to take care of. We'll paint it in the summer. And we want to build little cubbies to let them store stuff inside. And we need a real set of steps to the middle platform, and a real ladder to the top. But the general work is finis!
Here is the corner of the twin's room before we started.
This is the first platform in place.
This is the second platform in place.
And this is the finished project.
There were no major headaches, except for the fact that while bolting the frame to a wall stud, I managed to perfect bisect a wire that happened to be running through that particular 2x4, at the exact height that I needed to attach the platform. What are the odds? That little side adventure in re-wiring added about two hours.
But nobody died, or even sustained any major injuries. So I call that a victory.
On a tangential note, I really did sing "Godzilla" by Blue Oyster Cult while working on this. Something I never understood. A portion of the lyrics are:
Helpless people on subway trains
Scream, bug-eyed, as he looks in on them
If the people are on a SUBway, how can he look in on them?.
No comments:
Post a Comment