Bunk Bed to Cottage House

 We bought this bunk bed off Craigslist in the summer with the intent of adding a facade to make it look more like a cottage house.  I bought the stairs at a consignment store in Redding for $50, so after a 2 hr drive I crammed those stairs in the car and barely had room for the kids!  But, I knew I wanted stairs for Megan as I didn't trust her to climb up and down the outside rail during the middle of the night without major accident or injury.  So, I drew a few hours drawing up the plans and blueprint of what I was wanting, bought some wood at the big box store and my dad came and helped my dream become a reality.

 We, of course, had to lots of refiguring and remeasuring to make it work best.  I wanted the bottom windows as large as possible to allow light in for Kendra.

 Mikayla even got in on the power tool action.

 Here they are enjoying the bunk bed as is for the last time!

 The side panel went up first.  We found these sheets of Masonite at Home Depot that looke like fake siding and painted it white.  We trimmed out the big window with 1x4 and painted it blue.

 We then added on the frame support for the top story.

 Cut down the other sheet of siding to size, and attached it on top.  We made window boxes for the smaller windows and painted those pink.  I LOVE these window boxes, they turned out exactly like I had imagined!

 My original plan was to have shutters that actually open and close.  If they closed, they'd be hitting the flowers in the window box, therefore negating the need for a window box.  So, we asked the girls if they'd rather have working shutters or flowers.  Flowers.  Unanimously.  :)  So, all that time we spent measuring, reconfiguring, buying hinges, drilling, and re-drilling--and it was all for naught.  We then simply screwed the shutters onto the trim and boom, it was done!

 I didn't want flowers int he window boxes, because I thought it would be super cute and functional to have them double as book holders.  Love it!

It really turned out just as I had pictured if not better than I imagined!  HUGE thank you to my dad and all his hard work and time in helping this little dream come true.  It was a fun project for us to work on together and then girls LOVE their new bunk bed!