Brenan's BIG Big Boy Bed

Brenan thinks he's a big boy. =) He likes to put on his shoes and wander around out back in his diaper. I admit it - we can be pretty ghetto around here! His new thing is climbing our fence and talking to the neighbors OR climbing through the fence slats and wandering around in the neighbor's backyard. It's particularly awesome when he does that - especially if he's just in his diaper! =)

We decided it was high time Brenan graduated from his crib. After all, if he can climb over a fence he can probably climb out of his crib! He hasn't tried yet but I have caught him in the middle of some seriously cool acrobatic moves while playing in his crib. We've been perusing Ana White's website for months and getting SO excited about all the furniture we are going to build! We decided to start with a bed for Brenan and we are quite proud of the end product! It was definitely a joint effort.

First, I bought all the wood and then Nathan cut it using our handy radial arm saw!

Then I sanded and sanded and sanded and sanded. I am SO glad we invested in a sander back when we did our table!! Note to self: move things away from the sanding area because EVERYTHING will be covered in sawdust!!

Nathan did most of the hammering and screwing and drilling but I was there to hold things in place for him. =) Here are the beginnings of our head board and foot board.

Almost done! We just need to paint. I have a love/hate relationship with paint. =)

I did all the painting because Nathan has a hate/hate relationship with painting. Haha! I did 1 layer of primer and 3 layers of the blue. It was humid so I don't think the paint was drying very fast. I may have painted over not quite dry paint. Oh well. Also, I think next time I will figure out a way to do it indoors. Little bugs kept getting stuck in the paint and bird mosquitos were attacking me and june bugs were dive bombing me. It's lucky I didn't knock over the bed! I don't react very well when bugs fly at me!

We have a couple moves coming up so we wanted the bed to be easy to take apart. We bought some handy hardware from Rockler.com and it worked like a dream!

When we set it up it seemed HUGE!! It's quite the jump from a crib to a twin sized bed!

He loves his "blue bed". At night he goes to bed in it just as easily as he did when we put him in his crib.

Naptime was not so successful! He played for a couple hours and then fell asleep next to the kitchen.

I broke out the pack n' play and he went right back to his 3 hour naps. What a sleepy head! So, what do you think of our first project?! Next we are making the girl's bunk beds. It will be similar to Brenan's bed except we are going to put an arch on the headboards and footboards and use 2X4's instead of 4X4 posts. I already have the wood sitting in the garage. I love feeling like we can build anything we want!