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Kids Beds

The beds were built when they were born, so I had one set of "crib rails" that attached to the top of each for the first two years or so. The bottom picture is more recent (the top is Rebecca, who is now 8, the bottom is Jason's bed recently, he's 6). The drawers are about 33" deep and full extension - lots of storage space.

The end panels are glue-ups. They attach to the corner posts with sliding dovetails (the whole bed disassembles and "folds flat" for transport). The corner posts are about 2x6ish. The front face frame is M&T, the back is a solid glue-up (except Jason's, which is a single 14" wide board :). The front and back are flush with the posts on the inside (facing the mattress); the headboards are inset about an inch.

The drawers are 4/4 with a 3/8 ply bottom. How the drawers work is like this - The sides extend past the back by a few inches, and they're notched with 7/8" slots horizontally. In those slots I put a cross-piece that's 1" longer than the drawer is wide, and drill holes down through the drawers and cross piece and use a big nail to pin them loosely in place. This cross piece slides in dadoes in the runners; the drawer just rests on the bottom piece of the front face frame. I'll probably have to draw a picture.

The drawer runners are attached to the front/back with a cleat. The cleat is a 1x2 screwed vertically to the front/back; and the runners screw into the side of that. The cleat goes to the floor so that there's no weight on the screws that go into the face frame (they're short). The tops of the drawer runners support a 3/4" birch ply sheet that the mattress sits on. Between each pair of drawers there's a support "leg" that goes from the ply to the floor - more support - and cleats on the head boards finish up the support. The kids *are* allowed to jump on their beds!

The drawer pulls are slots cut with a 3/4" router bit and rounded over. Everything has a 1/4" radius round over edge - no sharp edges. There's a cleat behind the bottom rail of the front face that stops the drawers from going any further in than they should.

The finish is colonial maple and poly, inside and out.

Here is a PDF of some of the dimensions, found on old backups from "back when".

Here is a PDF of key elevations and vertical measurements.


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