Camp Doll Diaries 2013: Real Beds!

First of all, let me tell you upfront that I am not a good woodworker. I may get better with practice, but I'm not going to make real people furniture any time soon.

I found the plans for these beds on Ana White's fantastic site. The supplies for each bed cost me around $2.15, plus tax.

At that price, you can afford to scrap a whole bed if it goes wrong ... if you have easy access to the cutting tools to make another one. I had one of our church men cut these for me, so I couldn't just whip out new pieces any time I wanted to. So when I did one or two things wrong, I looked for ways to salvage it.

I said all of that to say this ... I had originally planned to make these so they could stack as bunkbeds (with the pencil idea on the website) or stand alone. But after I made a few mistakes, they are never going to stack perfectly. I'm okay with that, though, because you can see that they stack just fine - albeit a little "off" - and no one falls out of bed at night.

Here is what you end up with after you've followed the plans. However, if you follow the plans correctly, your bed rails will be flush with the the outside of the headboard, not attached to the inside (one of my mistakes).

I needed a mattress support, but I didn't have any MDF board or even cardboard lying around. I did have foamcore board, though, so I used it for my mattress support:

Then you need a mattress. Technically you don't need a mattress because the dolls won't ever complain, but we all wanted a mattress for the beds.

So I used about the same measurements that I used for the foamcore support and made a mattress loosely based on a picture I saw on another blog.

And now you see why I should have taken the time to actually look up the tutorial - the mattress shortened a bit, thanks to the fiberfill stuffing. I hadn't thought of that. Oh well, we were in a nasty thunderstorm at the time, and I just wanted to do it while I was in the mood. Lesson learned. (The second one went much better.)

The next thing we needed wanted to make was a cute pillow.

I started out with two 5x8" rectangles and used 1/4" seam allowances.

Yay! It helped to fill in the gap that the mattress left.

Once you get the bedding on, you'll never notice the imperfections!

I'm thinking about making proper sheets and pillowcases for the beds, but I'm leaving well enough alone for the moment. My kids were thrilled to pieces with the beds just the way they are.