Baby number two is only a couple of months away, so their big sister needed to relinquish the cot and move up in the world. Perhaps it was the tugging of my inner heartstrings that inspired this project, but I felt somewhat cruel asking her to give up the security of her former crib. Some things she wanted to include on her big girl bed were: Rainbows, unicorns, curtains, stars and the moon. She doesn't ask for much... 😃 When my parents asked me as a five-year-old what I would like in our new house, I said a giant Christmas tree and a pool. They did that for me, so I tried my best here too.
I started by requesting my father-in-law to keep an eye out for a solid timber bed frame on council clean-up. I'm all for Upcycling, and this seemed like a project where new wasn't necessarily better. A couple of days later, he came up with the goods, and I had a perfect solid timber bed to begin the project on. I began by removing the years worth of stickers, sanding the frame down and giving it a solid clean-up.
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I knew I needed to build a canopy, and that would require support. I drilled holes in the headboard and base to glue in dowels. The dowels would allow me to connect 42 x 42mm uprights with corresponding holes to them.
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I used Dulux Precision primer over the existing gloss paint as it has the best adhesion on stubborn surfaces. I then top coated with Dulux Aquanamel.
I built the canopy frame out of 42 x 19mm 2.4m Premium Grade Dressed Pine and temporarily fixed it in place to make sure everything would fit when re-assembled inside.
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I glued and screwed a CustomWood MDF 2440 x 1220 x 6mm Standard MDF Panel onto the bottom of the canopy frame. I then cut out some star shapes with my jigsaw. A plastic milk container was cut up and the pieces glued on top of the cutouts. This would allow light to transfer through them later.
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I decided just the cut out shapes weren't doing it for me, and it needed a bit more wow factor, so I drilled 150 4mm holes and glued in LED lights. A rope light would provide the colours for the star cutouts and moon. A second 6mm MDF skin was added to enclose the lighting. The top also looked a bit boring, so I created a bit of a roof and added trim pieces around the sides to finish it. A curtain rail and curtains were added as requested.
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A final coat of paint and bedding was added to complete the look, and my job was done. As expected, a little girl was loving her new big girl bed to bits. I'm one happy dad!
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Stars twinkle and have function settings similar to Christmas lights. Although all these lights are low-voltage and LED, they'll only be left on for bedtime stories and then switched immediately off.
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