Building A Loft Bed (And The Importance of Community)

Inspiration

I grew up with bunk beds because I shared a room with my brother when we were younger, but all along I really wanted to have a loft bed. Even in college I was jealous of other people at different universities who were able to have loft beds with their desks underneath their beds.

I have my own apartment now and one of my favorite things to do is host a lot of people. My apartment is pretty big for a one bedroom floor plan, but still the space has some limitations. For one, my bedroom was pretty much off-limits during events. My bedroom isn’t all that sacred to me, its just that I lacked the kind of seating and room arrangement to have people be able to hang out and talk to each other. This planted the seed for me to convert my bedroom into a sort of second living room. Internally I call it my “sliving room” which can mean “Second Living Room”, “Sleeping/Living Room”, or “Slaying/Living Room”.

The loft bed was integral to this plan and it took awhile to get it made, but I am so happy with the results.

Building

After doing some DIY projects like hanging curtains and building wall shelves, the idea of a loft bed was stuck in the back of my mind. The more that I thought about it, the more that I thought that I could actually build it, which would fulfill one of my inner child’s deepest dreams.

In late April, I started actually looking into the feasibility of building a loft. I looked far and wide for Queen loft beds but it seemed like they did not exist in any kind of off-the-shelf form. There were Full or smaller ones, but as a 6’2” person I was not going to compromise on the size of the mattress. It wasn’t until late August that I actually bought a plan from Etsy that I had found months prior. In mid September I ask my uncles if they wanted to help me and we finally scheduled a build date for early November.

Cost:

• ~$10 - Queen Loft Bed Plans by WhatsNewWithNathan on Etsy
• ~$200 - Home Depot with current wood prices (only had to take one trip!)
• Free labor: it was me, my two uncles, and one of my cousins all working to build this thing
• It took about around 5 hours of fairly involved time for cutting, sanding, and screwing everything together
  • Home Depot didn’t take too long because we had a list of everything that we needed to get and we only had to go once
  • We also built it at my uncle’s house that was an hour away from my apartment so we had to drive all the supplies and a partially assembled frame over
  • I didn’t even sand that much and didn’t paint so that would’ve taken way longer

Difficulties:

• Some of the screw lengths were different because we couldn’t find them in Home Depot
• I had baseboard trim so we couldn’t get the bed posts/frame flush to the wall
• Stud finding was a bit difficult and was hard to really know if the toggle bolts went into the studs
• The 1x wood was only available in the weather-treated variety, so the color is a bit off than the other pieces of wood

The Importance of Community

I am a very independent person and initially thought that I would be able to just build this all by myself. Having now done it, not only would I have been way out of my depths, I certainly would not have physically been able to do that. Many times during this process there were multiple people holding the bed frame while we were mounting it to the wall. Having multiple people and minds on this project allowed different perspectives for problem solving and for anticipating potential future problems.

It was hard for me to build up the courage to ask my uncles. Even though I knew they would probably say yes, I knew that it was also a big ask and that scheduling would be difficult because they are busy people with their own lives. However I am very grateful that they helped me and that I was able to spend a lot of quality time with them that I would not have otherwise gotten. This is a key point in community: that in letting people help you, you gain more connection to them.

Future Plans

• I have a huge Lovesac bean bag that I know would be perfect for putting under the loft for lounging and hanging out that I just haven’t had space for previously in my apartment. I just need to get it out of storage and get it in my room.
• I need to paint the bed, but I’m not sure what color I want to do because I’m worried that it will look cheap on the wood or that I will have to worry a lot about color interaction
• I think hanging curtains on it could be look cool
• Fairy lights, light strips or some kind of ambient lighting would really add to the chill atmosphere that I am going for