The Cozy Cottage

DIY Twin Bed, aka Kid’s Room Glow Up

Well the time has come, the time to admit that I no longer have a baby at all. We have a real big boy now and that means giving him a big kid room. August just turned 3 and we’re giving his room a glow up with DIYs, used goods and being as economical and simple as possible. The first project was to get rid of his crib and build him a real bed.

I loved our used Oeuf crib so much. We were the third family to have it and it was exactly the style I was looking for. It wasn’t given to us with a conversion kit and since those kits are expensive on their own, we knew for a while it wouldn’t be worth converting his crib to a toddler bed. Instead, we went straight for a twin bed.

Getting Started

My dad once built a full-size bed for a guest bedroom at my parents’ house and then kept the wood after he later disassembled the bed. He gave me the scrap wood this winter so I could use it for this project.

I also had an idea for an upholstered bed and was inspired by this design by Arent & Pyke Studio (for more kid’s bedroom inspiration, see here).

Building the Bedframe

So here’s how this DIY twin bed frame came together:

1. I cut down the two pieces of wood that served as the top and bottom of the full-sized bed to the width of a twin mattress size (about 40 inches).
2. Daniel gave me a pocket hole jig for Christmas and I got to try it out on this project. My dad had secured the corners of the bed with brackets but I used pocket holes instead.
3. I reused the beam my dad had used for the original center support.
4. I cut down some strips of wood I bought at Home Depot to create slats. and screwed those into the support rails my dad had already nailed into the sides of the bed.
5. He also already had legs for the bed so I screwed them into the bottoms at the four corners. But I accidentally split the wood because I used too much torque on the drill so I ended up replacing the legs with metal plates and pre-made legs from Home Depot.
6. I painted it all in Rainstorm SW 6230, a beautiful deep blue from Sherwin-Williams (full disclosure that Sherwin-Williams is a client of my public relations agency). The truth is we’re testing out this blue on his bed because I think I’d like to repaint our bedroom this color but wanted to see how it looked in person first.

DIY Upholstered Headboard

And now for the upholstered headboard. I really loved his crib sheets and didn’t want to get rid of them. Unfortunately, they don’t come in twin bed size so it was either part with them forever or find a way to use them. And so I did!:

1. I saved some larger boxes and pieces of cardboard from the shipments we received for our kitchen renovation and then cut them into half-crescent shapes of various sides.
2. We gave away an old sleeper sofa this winter but I kept the mattress foam padding we used for it and cut that down to fit the three pieces of shaped cardboard. I glued them together.
3. I then cut out the elastic and corners of all crib sheets that I was going to use for this, pulled them tightly across the foam side of the half-crescent pieces and used fabric glue on the ends of the fabric on the back side of the cardboard. To be honest, I wished I had pulled the sheets more tightly but it’ll do.
4. I then used my staple gun with air compressor to staple the cardboard into the walls of his bedroom to form a corner upholstered headboard.

Final Results and What’s Next

I got him a reading pillow so we can all read comfortably in his bed. I also removed the changing table pad from his dresser and moved a reading lamp there to be closer to his bed for nighttime. And now he has a big kid bed.

The other project in this room is giving away his bookshelf and replacing it with a taller one to accommodate his overflowing and growing collection of books. I’m planning on using a metal rail system and more scrap wood from my dad.

So what do you think of his big kid bed?