Shila's Room Part 1: Making a Camp Loft Bed

It's a little sad to say that we have lived in our house for 10 months and my 3 year old daughter is still bunking in Mason's room. For the longest her room has been a toy warehouse that we don't even really look at anymore.  So I finally got up the nerve to start on it. So during all the playing I have to keep in the back of my mind that even though this is Shila's room, she will one day be joined by her little sister, Alaya, so I might as well design with her in mind too. Even though I am known to change me mind on design constantly, I hope to make it were I would only need minimal changes to make me happy, I mean Shila...

Most smart people start with the paint, but I couldn't do something like that, I started with the bed! Shila had been telling me for months that she wants an up-bed like Mason so all I had to go on was she wanted have a bed where she climbed something to get into it. That is scary when I think about Shila, she is known to be clumsy.

When she was 2 years and 2 days we went on our daily walk to Mimi's house. I also took pictures on our walks through the country. Isn't she a doll, this kid is the cutest!

Well on the way back she started running and I yelled "Don't run! You'll fall!" Then she fell and busted her lip open. We spent the evening in the ER and 4 stitches later she looked like this.

It was a long and horrible night but luckily she verily has a scar and when she gets older a little lipstick will cover it. 

Then last year she was feeding the dogs with her daddy, she was sitting on the four wheeler while her daddy watered the dogs when she decided to climb off. She successfully got off the four wheeler, but broke her arm in the process. So a sad couple of nights in the hospital and a couple lovely drawings from Mason.

  

She spent her 3rd birthday like this...

Soooo, I don't know about bunk beds. Luckily I have and obsession with Ana White and spend hours looking at her page and planning all the things I can make but don't have the time too. I came across her plans for the Camp Loft Bed with Stairs and I knew it was meant to be. Then I procrastinated for months until I got a 50 dollar gift card for Lowe's and decided that was the perfect incentive to build her bed. So with the help of my dad I loaded all the lumber and kreg jig screws I needed and got started on the build.

 I started the project alone, but was soon criticized by my dad that I didn't perfectly level every thing so this is what I did by myself. It looks good to me!

Then my dad, Barney, stood by just to help hold things and include jack-A comments about what I was doing, but in my family sarcasm is how we show love. He was pretty helpful... 

Don't ask me why, but once I finished the bed and everyone came to see it, I really wanted a picture with my girls. I had been out in the dirty shed for hours and had no makeup and verily even brushed my hair, but if I waited to take pictures every time I looked amazing, I wouldn't have any.  So this is my glee to know I spent the day making something for two of the loves of my life and they seemed to enjoy it too.

Shila did more than Alaya!

Even Dottie loved it.

Now to finish the sanding, filling, and painting :( Alaya was my helper when it came to spraying the bed, not really she just watched me set up.

BAM! White bed! I love having a paint sprayer! It makes the process so simple, I just spray, sand, spray, sand. It takes a lot less time then with a brush or roller.

Isn't it beautiful???

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Duct tape table

Just let me apologize that the pictures aren't the best. There are two pictures that were taken years ago and the rest are from my phone since Shila has stolen my SD card for the millionth time.

Okay so sometimes I just get hit with genius, well what I think to be really good ideas. My husband usually stares at me like I'm an idiot when I start talking about what I can make or do, but he is a good sport and usually just says okay. The main reason is that I usually do things by myself unless I really get stuck or frustrated.  So one day a couple years ago I was with Shila, she was maybe 1 and a half, and we were going through our local thrift store when she saw something she had to have.

Oh yes a Wall-E table and chairs for tea parties. It is a great set, no tears or broken pieces, but it's yellow and has Wall-E on it! So I went to Walmart one day and found a table cloth and cut it up and put it on table and presto! great table and chairs!

THENNNN WE GOT CATS! And before I knew it the cats had found the perfect place to claw it's nails into. Before we knew it they had pulled giant holes out of the table cloth and it looked like this.

It was pretty gross and it sat like this for awhile. So one day I was at Michael's and I stared at the duct tape for a couple minutes. So I bought 2 colors, white and pink, and started to work out how I was going to use them. Like most people, I am obsessed with chevron patterns.  I find myself wanting to do a chevron pattern on anything but I have not put it into my house yet, so I thought this would be perfect way.

So I unscrewed all the pieces I wanted to fix and removed all of the nasty table cloth parts. With the chairs I just started by covering a top corner with one piece of tape and working out from then. The best tip is to use a good pair of scissors, mine were HORRIBLE and took longer than it should.

Isn't it beautiful! I still needed to respray the metal pieces, but I'm the only person who seems to see the yellow popping out. The table was the hard part that need some real thought and .... math :(

So I pulled out the ruler and pen and got started with a simple triangle and worked from there. 

It took an hour and a half, in the middle of the night, on my bed, to get it finished but I really enjoyed the process. When I was done I was really happy with how it turned out and Shila was even more excited.

Ugggg so much better! 

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