Emma's Bed

This is Emma playing before the bed was built. She loves to organize stuff. Taking the first big step of gutting the old closet.

Removing the internals was easier than I thought. No glue, only skinny but long nails holding things together.

Building the initial frame to test the height.

You can see the height is about 4ft and right at the LEGO man. This was too high and I decided to make it lower.

Bed height is just below the LEGO man

I researched bed sizes and it turns out the depth of the closet is exactly the same as a narrow twin. The length is also close, the corner is scrunched up a few inches, but hardly noticeable and with a memory foam mattress, it was easy to push in. Here is the first night beta testing.

Emma's knew what she wanted and drew out this prototype for me to follow.

Since I lowered the bed to give more headroom, I don't think I could fit the stuff below that she wanted.

Emma helping to paint the frame

After testing the bed for one night, I lowered it even more. The frame is well below the LEGO man now and was about 6-8 inches lower than initially designed.

Painting added and Emma already organizing

A fresh coat of paint made everything look great. It was really hard to paint over eggshell/semi-gloss paint and took a few coats.

Custom curtains and light string added

The towels are there to cover a rough unfinished piece of wood used for the guard. The curtains had to be custom tailored and I sewed them.

Installed LED moldings with dimmable lights

After all Emma's organizing, we had to rip it all out and install a custom molding to hide the LED light strip. Nothing fancy, just a basic piece of wood. I did however used spackle to seal all the edges, then used drywall spray to add texture to match the walls.

Here are her shelves fully stocked and organized.

The black rainbow box is a custom removable trash can I designed. She has her own fan, fridge, outlets, Google Home, and light switch.

Big mess, work still in progress.

Using Fusion360, I created a ladder in order to get the right angles for the top bracket that lets it hook on to the frame. I also added a simple guard.

Design of the ladder Getting close to finishing the top.

I mounted a projector to the ceiling, and Emma added vines to the string lights to make it look like a forest. I also custom designed some curtain tiebacks to hold the curtains open.

80 inch projector screen

I installed an 80 inch pull down projector screen for the projector. This was really hard to position correctly since it was slightly at an angle to the bed. I ended up with a lot of holes in the ceiling, luckily they were easy to patch. Hooked up to the projector is a FireTV and a Nintendo Switch for movie night and game night with Emma.

Finalizing the design

Now that testing was done, I started refining the 3D printed pieces and replacing them with pink PETG instead of the orange test PLA.

First movie night!

Popcorn, custom drink holder, custom tray holder, new projector... everything came out as expected.