The Baby Bunk part 1

The incredible news of having your first child brings with it not only the dual-emotion of simultaneous joy/fear (HOLY CRAP! WE HAVIN' A BABY!....holy crap...we are having a baby?), but also the probing questions of what will it like to eat, sleep in, and play with? Is it ok to save money on diapers by having the child roam free in the yard as nature intended? Or is it common practice to lay newspaper on the bare floor as an adequate sleeping arrangement? Luckily for me, my wife is more than nominally versed in such things; good thing too, otherwise social services would be breathing heavily down my neck (and for what?! Setting the kid on a running engine block so he/she can watch daddy work on the car would be apparently frowned upon!). So with the advent of our first born's birth on the not-so-distant horizon, I focused my anticipatory energies into the one of the more valid questions: How/where will this kid sleep?

In many parts of the world (both 1st and 3rd world countries) the newborn child, up until 6 months or so, would sleep with mother and father in the same bed. This arrangement gives the benefit of easy access of baby to mother and allows the mother to stay in bed while nursing. Also it reduces stress disorders and the possibility of SIDS. Whilst this be our preferred arrangement, our bed doesn't necessarily accommodate: our bed doesn't have a lot of room being just a queen and we have a lot of poofy blankets with a squishy mattress pad (MARSHMALLOW!) - such things can be a suffocation hazard. So we researched the next best thing: a "co-sleeper Baby Bunk."

This option was the best we could see. It provided the same benefits of co-sleeping as far as easy access goes yet it is at the same time a bit safer for our situation. "Great! How much is it?!" you may ask. This Baby-Bunk co-sleeper can be yours for the low price of $395.95.

Yeah no. I don't love the kid that much (I'M KIDDING!!). All joking aside, (play Epic Battle Music) as a token of my love for this child and for the rest of my posterity, I therefore decided to graduate myself from simple spice racks and bookshelves, to a multivariate, somewhat more complex sleeping platform that would safely support the fruit of my loins for nights on end! It will be sturdy and compliant to my plans! It will never falter nor fail to keep it's form, nor will it creak or squeak with a mere jostle of bed or bunk. Movement of parent nor babe will ever compromise it's silent subtlety. "Impossible!" you say?! Nay I say! It can and will be done! It is my fatherly responsibility, NEIN, duty (!!) to provide a cozy layer for my brood from my blood, sweat, and tears!

(end Epic Battle Music)

LET'S DO THIS THING!

Step One: Drafting plans

My drawing ability is comparable to a caffeine-ridden, finger-painting child.
So I decided to acquire some drawing aids/drafting tools to help me with some of the basics: such as a T-square, different angled triangles, french curves (ooh la la!), and a fancy mechanical pencil. A drafting tablet w/easeled table would have been too expensive, so I used a little TV-tray and set my T-square against that - it was adequate.

The Results

(...in all it's drafted majesty...)

My design for the Baby-Bunk meandered from the original photos because of the height of our mattress. I didn't want Tess to strain her back picking-up and replacing baby numerous times during the night, so I raised it a good 12 inches (I think). Everything else was of the same likeness (for now).

(Nota Bene...no matter what I attempt to draw or caligracate, my inability to think ahead by keeping it all within the confines of the drawing space is unparalleled.)

Step Two: Cutting the legs and leg-supports.

Fairly uneventful process....well...I may have miscalculated the length of the front "legs" which ended up having two sets of legs cut: one set I would actually use for the bunk and the other for kindling.
For the leg-supports, I had to add an extra 1/2 inch or so at each end to allot for a joining technique called Mortise and Tenon.

Step Three: Mortise and Tenon

I used my cordless drill with a "Drill-Guide" (which is a fancy [not-really] guide that plants the drill at a perfect [not really] perpendicular position so I can drill straight...[not really]) and using a chisel to clean out the rest so I have a nice clean rectangular hole (mortise) in the sides of the legs. Here is a video of the procedure (nice shorts buddy). Then I used the bandsaw to cut the Tenons to shape.

(I used Carpenters Glue to bond.)




Here is what it looks like now. (I apologize for not having pictures of a step by step procedure; the base was completed before this Blog was established. Though, I assure you that the rest of the steps are well documented.)






I later added the rungs that go underneath the mattress: I used the bandsaw to cut into the leg-supports, sanded the openings, and just dropped the rungs in. Instead of gluing them in, I decided to pilot some holes and use screws to secure them. Seeing how the unit is pretty tall, I didn't want a fixed  cumbersome (width-wise) piece of furniture to be difficult moving in and out of doorways.







I also sanded the rungs down more than usual so that no splinter would catch the fabric of the mattress.






Well there you have it! The Baby-Bunk base is basically b..ahh...finished! And to think, I was able to make it fairly square and everything (with my sad lack of tools, this is an accomplishment!)!

And by no means do I, myself, take all of the credit for the success of this part of the project (nor any part of the project for that matter). With consistent prayers to St. Joseph and The Big Carpenter Himself, this thing miraculously came together with minimum hiccups (rather hiccups that couldn't be corrected/exploited).

Stay tuned for part 2 of the Baby-Bunk! Next will be the body of the bed (and there was much rejoicing...[yay])!!

Thanks for reading!

PAX

p.s. St. Joseph, pray for us!