Make sure she can sleep soundly by building her a secure bed.
You can choose from several different materials for your child's bunk bed. Metal can be one of the more durable choices, and can stand up to the wear and tear of your child's bouncy years more effectively than wood. These materials will help you build a bed that will serve your children well and still be sturdy enough to make for a tempting offering at a garage sale when they are grown. Does this Spark an idea?
Tools
To assemble the metal bunk bed, you'll need a power drill, channel lock pliers, a wrench, a tape measure and a pencil.
Structure: Bed Frames
A standard twin mattress is six feet long, so your frames want to be a bit longer. You'll need four heavy-gauge metal bars, 76 to 78 inches in length, two for each frame. For crosspieces at the ends of each mattress, you'll want four shorter bars of the same gauge, 40 to 42 inches in length. Instead of the slats you would find on a wooden bed, you'll want metal frame supports that are long enough to connect the longer bars -- no more than three inches shorter than your end bars.
You'll want four sturdy metal posts for your bed's vertical supports. Keep your bottom bunk a foot off the floor, and give at least three feet of space between the top and bottom bunk. Your posts will need to be between 49 and 51 inches in length.
Hardware
You'll need some carriage bolts (with corresponding nuts) to hold the vertical bars to both of the bed frame. Choose bolts that are at least 1-1/2 inches in thickness. You'll also want some three-inch screws to connect the mattress supports to the long bed frame bars and to connect the rungs to the side bars of the ladder.
Structure: The Ladder and Guardrails
For the top bunk, you'll want metal guardrails that are the same length as the long side of the mattress--generally, these will come with your kit. You'll want some narrower-gauge bars for the sides of the ladder and anywhere between four and seven crosspieces for rungs.
Tags: inches length, bottom bunk, want four, want metal, want some, your child
