DIY Bunk Bed or Loft Bed

J's customer Creations is sponsored by bits and bits use the code J Bates to save 10% off your next router bit or CNC bit purchase at bits bits.com when I first started woodworking uh I did not have access to Hardwoods nice beautiful Hardwoods I also did not have the tools to process roughs on Hardwoods so for me to acquire any type of hardwood was a lot of work I have a series of videos on this channel called Trash to Treasure where I would dismantle uh spring mattresses cabinet face frames from a kitchen remodel uh any piece of furniture that was left by the dumpster in an apartment complex I lived at um all kinds of dismantling to gain access to just a tiny amount of Hardwoods I'm telling you it was a ridiculous amount of work for a small reward but I would have these these pieces of wood that I did not have access to Prior and it was it was interesting to work with them even if it was small projects so that means the majority of my projects were made out of box store Lumber like this right here this is a stack of 2x10 For an upcoming project this will be Furniture piece number five in a bedroom set that I made years and years ago so when I made this particular bedroom set um I I wanted to progress in difficulty as I made the whole set but also I wanted to Source all of the material out of box store Lumber so it would be more accessible to um so the projects would be more accessible to people out there I started with a 2x4 and 2x6 bunk bed now 2x4s I don't particularly like to work with around here because the majority of them are Douglas fur and they have kind of have this pink Hue to them that I kind of don't like 2x sixes are typically White Pine which in my opinion is just a little bit on the soft side so I I did make that 2x4 and 2x6 bunk bed after that uh the rest of the projects were sourced out of larger material so if you go up to a 2x8 2x10 2 x 12 it's around where I'm where I'm at in Mississippi it's Southern yellow pine so a lot of people have either a a Love or a hate relationship with Southern yellow pine there's no middle ground so I particularly love this material if you if you get these wider boards they almost always have the center pith in the middle that you want to remove for stability reasons and The Wider boards typically have less knots as well so if you remove the knots for visual re reasons remove the center pith for stability reasons what your left with is some nice beautiful beautiful straight grain material that you can make pretty nice projects out of projects that would surprise you from the stereotypical oh that's just Pine you know so uh anyway that's what this is for It's For an upcoming project for that bedroom set but the subject of this video is Project number one in that bedroom set and that is the 2x4 and 2x6 bunk bed we we've used that bunk bed since I built it it's been disassembled and moved into its current currently it's in its uh fourth different location uh so it can be T taken down and put back together and it's still just as strong as it was day one actually we made a couple different modifications to it and I'm going to jump into SketchUp and show you some of those modifications now this is the bunk bed as it was originally designed and built very basic design 2x4s 2x6s no angled Cuts very basic construction and it is solid it is solid as a rock no racking in either direction the side assemblies act as ladders evenly spaced platforms to get up to the top and if you notice on the top I did not put any rails and that's because I initially designed this for adults and I don't know a single adult in my entire life who has ever falling off the bed so I didn't put rails there of course you can obviously add rails I actually ended up adding rails down the road it was a couple years after building this that I actually added these rails and now my daughter wants to use this in her bedroom she wants to remove the bottom bunk completely and use the top bunk so that way she can add more floor space down below so turn the bunk bed into a loft bed there are a couple things that I need to do to make this good enough for her to sleep on the top so I want to build a ladder on the front very easy modifications here due to the way that these pieces Nest into place everything will just fall into place like it was originally designed that way so I'm going to add this vertical piece and these horizontal ladder rungs with a 9 in spacing for each one of the foot platforms that leaves me with 13 in for the first step that's totally fine I'll also add these three vertical pieces to stop her from Rolling forward off of the bed the back side and the left side are snug up against the wall with no space for her to fall off in those directions that's fine and on the footboard side over here she has a tall chest of drawers right there she never sleeps at the foot of her bed she's always curled up in a ball right here near the pillow so I'm not worried about this being um as is uh with that being said this just a small simple modification you just need a few boards and I happen to have some 10t 2x4s on hand so I will use 1 2 3 10t 2x4s to cut these pieces [Music] here in the bedroom you can see that I've already removed the lower frame so the bunk bed is now a loft bed so we can get more floor space for this little princess tent to go in the corner uh to the right of the bunk bed you can see a chest of drawers that I completed that's part of the bedroom set completed that years ago to the right of that is actually the lid to the blanket chest which is in her closet and to the left of the bunk bed is a nightstand then I'm going to replace with a Southern yellow pine version uh on top of the bunk bed that's one of those temporary solutions that uh is probably going to be a lot longer lasting than what you typically think of as temporary I just screwed a piece of of uh super strut right to the top of it for a a solid mount to hang her gymnastics rings she's in love with these gymnastics rings gymnastics rings are fantastic exercise for children so I don't care how ugly and temporary that uh black bar looks uh it allows my daughter to get some really really good exercise indoors which is fantastic the installation of the ladder pretty basic pretty simple very straightforward I do want to give my wife just a huge pad on the back here for allowing me to bring this Handa in and cut this board in place and spray sawdust all over the bedroom and uh she was a trooper for that she did she did hold the vacuum right around it as I was cutting this so uh kudos for that uh but yeah here it is just a very very basic modification to a bunk bed to turn it into a loft bed I am not going to add any finish at all to these pieces because as this bunk bed ages and changes and moves it's it's all going to gather fingerprints and finger oils and and um it's it's just going to age naturally the horizontal rail that I have on top there's no finish on it and you can see how much it's already looking like the rest of the project as it is um the rest of the project I used an a tinted wax that I'm just not too fond of so I'm not going to take the hassle to to add it just for visual consistency that's it for this one a very basic modification turning a bunk bed into a loft bed uh super simple to do anybody can do this anybody can make this bunk bed with just very very basic tools if you're interested in more information on this bunk bed or the chest of drawers or the blanket chest or the bookcases I'll have links down in the description where you can uh check out those projects go to my website J Custom Creation /ne newsletter and sign up for my email newsletter so you don't miss anything that I publish you guys take care have a great day and I'll talk to you in the next video