DIY Kids House Bed (with Storage!) ｜ How To Build

Welcome back to the House of Wood, I'm Jen Woodhouse and today I'm going to show you how I made this DIY kids house bed with storage drawers for my neighbor's daughter. And don't worry, if you're intimidated by installing drawer slides, you'll want to see my workaround for this. First we cut down the plywood pieces. All of the measurements and 3D diagrams will be in the plans which I'll link below. Next I drilled the pocket holes. Pocket hole joinery will make this assembly go pretty quick and easy and I've really been digging this pocket hole jig by Porter Cable. I'll also leave links to the tools I used for this project in the description box below. Now at this point don't worry if the structure is wobbly. We'll reinforce it along the way and it'll get stronger as the glue dries and as we add more support. I just love when my husband helps me in the shop. He lifts all the heavy stuff. Oh and here's a quick tip. Pick up a foam insulation panel to use as a cutting mat so you don't damage your floors or your blade. Here I'm using a cutoff piece as my straight edge to guide my saw. I temporarily nailed it down so that it wouldn't move while I made the cut. Then I can just pry off the board when I'm done. This is a really handy trick when you can't use clamps. After cutting the house parts out, I added 1x2 board and batten trim. I did this just for the piece that will serve as the footboard and I'll do something different for the headboard. I used a brad nailer and wood glue to attach these pieces. Now be sure to always use glue whenever you're just using nails to attach boards. This will make your joints stronger. Now if you look closely, I made a mistake here. I got a little ahead of myself and attached the vertical piece before trimming out the window. So instead of prying off the whole piece, I used this Dremel tool to cut it down. So now I can go back and add my window trim. Now let's move on to the headboard. I'm using 2x2s here to frame it out. Again, I'm using nails in place of clamps. I temporarily attached the 2x2s with brad nails and then I flipped the whole thing over and drove wood screws in from the other side. Now this is probably overkill, but it's like I always say, why build when you can overbuild? To add the cute lattice detail, I cut a couple of scraps to serve as spacers so that I could space the slats apart equally without having to measure each time. But this time I used a pin nailer and wood glue since a brad or a finish nailer would have been too aggressive on these delicate lattice pieces. All right, now it's drawer building time. I used brad nails and wood glue to construct the drawer box and I typically use quarter inch plywood for the bottom of the drawer, but this time I used three quarter inch and I'll tell you why in a second. Remember how I told you I had a workaround for installing drawer slides? Well, instead of fiddling with drawer slides, I used rolling casters. The thicker plywood bottom gives the casters something more substantial to screw into. I chose casters over drawer slides for a few reasons. They were cheaper, easier to install, more forgiving if your project isn't perfectly square, and they create mobile storage. My neighbor's daughter can stash her toys and treasures in the drawers, roll it out into her room for playtime, and then roll it back in for cleanup. Finally, I attached the drawer facing the knob and then we took it all into her room for assembly. We just love how it turned out and bedtime and playtime and cleanup time is so much more magical now. For more information, you can read the step-by-step tutorial on jenwoodhouse.com and don't forget to download the plans while you're at it. And if you build this, I'd love to see it. Tag me at Jen Woodhouse on social media for a chance to be featured. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.