Yep, He Really Did It: The Fire Truck Loft Bed

Remember a couple of months ago when we dreamed of building a fire truck loft bed for Nathan?

Back then I said:

Mr. Andi is 100% sure he can build it, but I’m only 60% certain he can do it, so I calculate the odds of us attempting it at 80%…..Stay tuned.

Well, the bed is (mostly) finished so I thought you might want to see the (mostly) finished product. First, a few flashback photos:

Although we showed Nathan the plans, which included a photo of a similar bed, before we (and by “we” I mean Mr. Andi) began working, the work rocked along for a little while in the garage before Nathan realized what was going on. The first day the four walls were assembled, though, he GOT IT, though he didn’t really see the truck yet.

In case you’re wondering, the four walls of the bed bolt together – we assembled it in the garage for painting, then took it back apart to move it into the house.

When the painting began, the fire truck began to take shape. I normally park in the garage, but had been parking just outside it while Mr. Andi was working. Every day when we got ready to back out of the driveway, Nathan would wave at the bed and say, “Bye, truck!”

Then came the front “grill” and “headlights,” followed by a “tire” and a shiny piece of metal for the wheel, and then…

Last Friday night, we moved the bed into Nathan’s room.

The (mostly) finished project:

We also chose to omit the ladder bucket in the original plan because it wouldn’t have supported, oh, 40-ish pounds of weight and we weren’t confident we could keep 40-ish pounds of boy from climbing on it. 🙂 We still have a few things to do – FVFD letters, an engine number, possibly some lights (haven’t decided for sure about that yet), and a few other small accents (maybe a medal or something of the patron saint of fire prevention, who is also the patron of our parish, where Nathan was baptized).

He already had the city scene rug – a gift from Papa and Bebe for Christmas last year, along with some Melissa and Doug play items to go with it – so I set up a little “cars and trucks” corner for him to play in when he’s not inside the truck itself.

He’s not old enough for a ladder yet, so we built stairs instead. I’d like to find some no-slip strips to put on the steps. Right now he’s barefoot before bed and when he wakes up, but it’ll be cooler soon and I don’t want sock feet to slip.

Bonus: the stairs can be used for storage.

We did have one little hiccup with the stairs – as you can see, the distance between the top step and the bed is a good bit higher than the height of each of the steps, but we put him in the “stairwell” before the bed was finished and decided he was tall enough to pull himself up without help. Unfortunately, we didn’t consider the additional height of the mattress, so the first night I had to give him a boost into the bed.

The next night, though, the problem had been solved with a few screws and a 2×6: quickie homemade stool. For now, it just sits on the top step up against the bed wall, but we’ll be painting it and securing it to the bed in the next few days.

For more information on the plans we used, visit ana-white.com. She has dozens of DIY furniture plans, all completely free of charge, for download, including a playhouse loft bed similar to the fire truck.

So…tell me what you think. Did he do good? 😉