Children’s Loft Bed Roof Upgrade

It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to do any type of woodworking, though I’ve been meaning to upgrade my son’s bed as it seemed like the initial allure of a slide had worn off. At one point my wife wanted to setup a canopy for the bed since our son loves to make tents. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to build a quick addition on the bed to support either siding, or a sheet, effectively making the whole thing look like a little indoor play house.

When designing the roof, I wanted the rafters to connect to clamping blocks such that I wouldn’t have to drill any additional holes in the bed. Effectively 3 members would clamp to the railing of the loft bed, and then a ridge board would tie the members together keeping them properly spaced. Each member would have 2 rafters tied together with collar ties. The rafters are bolted to the clamps with 1/4-20 furniture bolts and pocket nuts in the rafters. Once together everything ended up being quite rigid, and the kiddo could probably hang from it like a monkey if he wanted to ( though I won’t advise it ).

Photos of the Roof Upgrade:
Roof Parts Roof Support Clamps Clamps Clamped Front Clamps Clamped Back ( pocket nut ) Roof Frame Installed Roof Done, Sheet Draped Over As Temporary Roof

 

Once the roof’s frame was up the job was pretty much done. For my chicken coop’s design the roof used 1/4″ x 4″ x 8′ western cedar boards overlapped, which I think would look really nice as a roof for the bed ( probably would use ash or pine instead ). At the moment however I simply draped a bed sheet over the frame which produced the desired effect ( and the kiddo loves it ).

Cheers,
Morgan

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