Viewer Project
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By Eric Bong from Cedar Rapids, IA
Added on July 17, 2014
Last year I was in need of a project to keep my mind occupied over the winter. My 4 year old daughter helped me decide that we should build her a bed. We searched the internet and found several ideas for building miniature houses. She was really in love with a Tudor style house, so we decided to start there.
This was my first project that I started without a definitive plan. I’ve built quite a few things, but I always drew up a plan first and worked from it. This time we just threw caution to the wind and made adjustments on the fly. The entire bed was built in a modular design so we could take it down if we ever moved. That made it easier to design on the fly as well.
The first thing was to set the height of “roof line” where the mattress would sit. Her mattress platform has a special place in my heart—my dad built it in 1985. I used it throughout college as my bed loft and now she is using it. It just feels good to keep using it. The platform is attached to the back wall and is supported by the front wall of the house. The 2″x4″s in the first picture are strictly there for initial support. Next we built the main walls. Everything was constructed out of MDO plywood, a great material to work with and so much easier than MDF. The bay window is held together with dominoes.
This was my first project with the new jointer. It really worked well. The joints were very easy to fit and very strong. Unfortunately I cut the slots a little deep in the front piece but little wood putty fixed that mistake. The “roof” was next on the build list. There is about 6″ of clearance to the top of the ceiling. The shingles are made from 18″ tempered hardboard. This part took the longest to complete since almost every single shingle needed to be individually cut to fit—many trips from the basement to the second floor. The trim is made from resawn poplar from the BORG. It was painted separately then nailed on. We added some LED lighting on the main floor and in the roof line. I removed all the wiring behind the stairs that shows in the final picture. I figured that 12V DC was much safer than the 110V AC. All in all this was a very satisfying winter distraction. She loves it! I have a 9 year old son to build for as well. But that will be another project submission!
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