Alaska Cabin Daybeds or Captain Beds with Storage Drawer Areas

Happy Monday guys! Hope you had an awesome weekend! Did you build anything?

Late Friday, I finally got to share the big news with you! Just in case you missed it ....

Our show on DIY Network will premiere on December 15th, at 10PM EST!  The title for this special is Building Off The Grid - Alaska Range, and follows us as we DIY a remote cabin in Alaska.

To celebrate our show premiering, we put together a fun thank you giveaway!

That's right - you could win an epic Alaska vacation for four.  If you win, you'll also get to stay at the cabin we built for this show, and see Alaska the way we locals live it.  So please help me spread the word about our show premiering, and enter now for a chance to win this vacation package!

If you win, bring the kids, because we've got the cabin set up for them.  I wanted our cabin to be a welcoming and fun for children, especially on cold winter nights.   The space needed to be bright and colorful, a space where the children would feel treasured and loved and free.

The kids loft would need to also be shared by a boy and a girl, where both felt appreciated and represented, but the room design naturally blending.  I did not want a bland gender neutrel space that did not celebrate our daughter's love of all things girly, and our son who is exactly the opposite.  

So this is what I came up with!

Amazing what some paint and scrap wood can create!

With the exception of the bedding, rugs, and the anchor and arrow, this room is all DIY.  I really had no choice.  Our nearest shopping is an all day drive from the cabin (each way), and I had a nursing one year old who I couldn't leave, but did not want to spend all day in the car seat, followed by all night in the shopping cart, and then another day in the car seat. For the entire cabin - including the living room upholstery, all the rugs, kitchen ware, pillows and bedding - I only bought enough to fit in the back of my truck, one truck load.  Everything else had to be DIY.

I had to get creative with materials.  To make this gallery wall, I just took scrap plywood pieces leftover from the cabin exterior sheathing, and cut them into rectangle (ish) shapes.  Then we painted them different colors, and cut out shapes.  To get the planked look, I also set my circular saw to about 1/4" deep (this is 5/8" thick plywood) and just made random cuts over the plywood.  I also used a drill bit to create holes to look like these pieces of plywood were reclaimed siding pieces.

To get the shared boy girl room decor to balance - in other words have a girly room that a boy also identified with - I paired pink (one super girly color) with two blues and a green.  I bought four quarts of paint, the bright pink, navy, turquoise, and green, and used the paint to add color to the wall gallery and the stool legs -

Those stool plans are coming very soon (please don't just screw legs to the stump top, it will not work).

My daughter has since rearranged the room, so her bed can look out at the lake.  Even though I prefer the beds under the gallery wall, I love that she is making the room her own and it tells me that she loves the space.  She's also brought in her own bedding and pillows.

So about those beds!

For extra sleeping, I wanted the beds to hinge down, so I could fill the cavity up with sleeping pads and bedding.  Of course the kids use it as a hide and seek spot.

This is the easiest daybed, captain bed, whatever you want to call it, that you could ever make.  I mean, this bed is ridiculously simple.

First, you screw 2x4s together to make the basic frames.

Then you add plywood or planked boards (I used 1x6s) to the ends to create the bed.  

The frames are sized so a off the shelf 1x12 works in the opening.  I just hinged them on at the bottom.

Then I trimmed the top edge out with a 1x2.  This hides the slat butt ends.

Then I just threw the slats on (actually just used any scrap 1x material that we had leftover from the cabin).  

Seriously, the easiest daybeds I've ever made!

You could use this design and add drawers - I'd suggest a third frame in the middle so you would have something to support the back of your drawer slides, assuming four drawers.  You could also easily scale this plan up to a full or queen.  For a full, make the width 54" and add a center support frame (build three frames instead of two.  Do the same for a queen, just make the overall dimensions 60" wide x 80" long.

So you ready to whip a few of these up?

The plans follow!

Have an awesome day, do something kind today!

XO Ana + Family