Henry's Bed

This past weekend, Kathie and I traveled to the Chicago area to celebrate a birthday (see prior posting below) and to deliver to Henry a bed that I had built for him. Henry has been sleeping on a twin-size mattress cozily placed on the floor of his bedroom, but in his mother's present condition, that hasn't been too convenient lately. In addition, there has been a limited amount of available storage space in the bedroom. So, the solution on which we settled was the so-called captain's bed, which has drawers below the bed and a headboard with shelves for books and toys (conveniently available for bedtime attention).

I built and finished the bed at home, of course, (though there is an "oops" about which to report in a moment) and we transported the pieces to Henry's house on Sunday. After the afore-mentioned birthday celebration, we returned on Monday to assemble the bed. Henry was a big help. After moving the existing mattress and bookshelves from the target area, some vacuuming was necessary.


Next, we began to assemble the bed by screwing together the headboard, footboard, and side rails. You can see that Henry helped with this too. He's pretty good with a screwdriver, and I like his focused attention to detail.



On the other hand, his attention span (understandably) leaves something to be desired, so with Grandma's help, I finished up the installation of the center supports.


Then, it was time to install the drawers. It was at this point, that I discovered the "oops." I had failed to stain and varnish the two outside edges of the center supports, which separate the drawers. They are the only visible part of the supports, and I somehow overlooked them when staining the other pieces. (After a later trip to Lowe's, we remedied this situation. D'oh!!)


Here is Henry with the fully assembled bed at this point.


Next, we installed the so-called posture-board and paused for a shot of Henry and me with the completely finished product.


Now we were able to place Henry's existing mattress atop the posture board. At this point, Henry had to give the bed a test drive.



He pronounced the bed fit for use and gave his grandfather an opportunity to give it a try too. By the way, he especially likes being able to sit atop his new bed and look out the front window or study the toys on the shelves of the headboard. He also likes that the headboard has a little H-shaped shelf right in the middle.


I had not anticipated how delighted Henry would be with this addition to his room. You can build things and have adults say all kinds of nice things about the end products, but nothing will ever feel quite as good as having the recipient of your labors demonstrate such joy over the results. Thanks, Henry, for making this all worthwhile. Sleep well, my boy!!