Two twin beds: painted!
Way back in 2003, when I was pregnant with Sonia, we bought a bunkbed, and at various points since, all of my kids have used it!
Once Sonia and Zoe both got their own rooms, we unstacked the bunkbeds.
I wasn't about to paint the beds in the cold of winter, so I put this on my summer to-do list.
I took the beds apart, which required me getting underneath Sonia's with a drill.
I had Sonia and Zoe help me sand these down, using my Bosch orbital sander.
A nice thing about refinishing is that you can even out colors. These had fade marks from where the top bunk rail used to be.
I also was able to fill the screw holes left from the rail and the ladder (both not necessary once the beds were unstacked.)
Also...a certain unnamed child chewed part of the top bunk when said child was small and the bed was quite new.
So, I was glad to finally be able to sand that damage down and paint over it!
After sanding, I primed everything with Zinnser water-based primer.
And then it was time for paint; Benjamin Moore Advance, satin sheen, in Cloud White.
Once all the painting was done (two coats, three in places that were especially hard to cover), I let the pieces dry for a day or two, just to let the paint get nice and hard.
And then I put the beds back into Sonia and Zoe's rooms.
Zoe's Bed
Zoe's now matches all the rest of her white furniture.
(The things around her bed are hung low because they had to be when her bed was a lower bunk. We'll rearrange them when we paint her walls.)
She's getting rid of this wall color this month, but the white bed does look great with it!
Sonia's Bed
Sonia's is lookin' good with her gray walls.
When we got this bed in 2003, I put the included finials in a bag and I've stored them ever since, on the off chance we'd un-stack the beds one day.
And I'm really glad now that I did!
This project took me two days to complete, mainly because I had to sand and paint both sides of the headboards and footboards.
That means a lot of extra sanding, painting, and drying time.
But it's done, and now the girls both have beds that look new and that match their rooms so much better than before.
I got Sonia's dresser painted as well, so keep an eye out for that later this week!
Browse my other furniture painting projects
A white twin bed with drawers
A craigslist pine bed, painted white
Before and afters of kitchen cabinet painting
I turned my pickled oak cabinets white with Benjamin Moore Advance paint.
A duo of Goodwill nightstands
I painted a pair of nightstands from Goodwill to replace our old Ikea nightstands.
Before and afters of a tallboy dresser from Freecycle
This dresser was in really bad shape, but a coat of paint fixed it up very nicely.
A freecycle nightstand
It almost perfectly matches the freecycle dresser!
A freecycle dresser and nightstand
Here's my first foray into white furniture painting.
Black Ikea loft bed
I turned a walnut craigslist loft bed black.
Black hand-me-down bed
I fixed a terrible paint job from the past, when I had no idea what I was doing!
One of my siblings chewed on the top of our bunk bed growing up. And now my boys have done the same thing to their bunk bed. I wonder what it is about that top bunk?
Well, that makes me feel a little better! I know they put plastic chew guards on cribs because babies are always biting the rails, but I couldn't believe my 4/5 year old did it.
Beautiful job of painting. I'm impressed, but I'm even more impressed that you kept track of the finials and could find them after 16 years!
I was impressed by that too! I would still be going "Now where did I store those...."
The beds look wonderful. I am always on see if your painting skills. I am redoing my table tops. Between the heat and the thunderstorms here in the Sunny South, I have got to squeeze in the final coats of poly.
Ha i have had one of the farmhouse tables with white legs & natural finish stashed under my bed for 10 years_ it has been with me since my single days. we upgraded to a fancier dining room set with leaves & everything. he is keeping the table - it is more his style & now i am so glad i kept it_ the bolts are taped to the legs. its waiting in storage to put it together in my new single lady place!!
Haha, I was impressed with myself too. They even made it through a move, because we bought that bunkbed when we still lived in our townhouse.
My middle brother used the coffee table as his own personal teething ring. Granted, my mother was pregnant and had a four year old at the time, so he probably got away with it more than he should but still.....it was covered in bite marks. My mother swore that he had to take that table with him - nite marks and all - to college. She saved it for all those years and the first second he needed a coffee table, you can guess which one he got
Congrats on crossing this project off of your To Do List! They look amazing ~ almost like brand new beds!
Thank you! I love that paint can make something look so fresh and new.
Looks great! I love Zoe's bedroom color too. Btw, is that a difuser next to Sonia's bed? I love the shape.
Yep, it's an essential oil diffuser from Young Living...it's the one that comes in the starter kit.
Great job! Have you settled on a color for Zoe's walls?
I think she's going to end up with a light gray; we have a little stack of paint color chips here that she is mulling over.
It's so sweet to see a home transition as a family does. We're in the "acquiring" bunk beds phase of life, but I'm sure the "unstacking" phase will be here before we know it.
Also, I'm so glad I'm not the only one whose children chew stuff up like a bunch of puppy dogs!
I've been thinking lately about how weird it is to be in the unstacking phase of life. Somehow, it doesn't SEEM that long ago that we were acquiring all this kid stuff, and now I am unstacking/giving away things that, at one time, seemed like they would be permanent parts of our lives.
The days are long, the years are short.
I'm on the other side and it's weird for me to think about all that stuff I bought that I'm now looking to get rid of because I'm not a single guy or a DINK any more.
And of course in a dozen years I'll be missing the Calico Critters phase I guess.
Great paint job....great before after plus tbrifty
Ah, the benefits of experience. It's taking me more than two days to do a small folding table. Baby steps, I tell you. Gotta start with baby steps.
In all your painting posts, you've never mentioned how to take things and apart and put them back together. How do you deal with wood that's been nailed or glued? How do you keep track of how to put the piece back together?
If something is glued or nailed together, I try not to mess with it! Better to leave it alone.
But in the case of the beds, the side rails were held to the headboards and footboards with screws that are easy to take apart. And on the other beds I've done, you don't even have to unscrew them...they just are held together with a metal piece that fits into a slot.
The slats on these beds were not originally nailed down. But over time, the canvas straps that are supposed to hold the slats in place have come apart. So, we had to use drywall screws to attach the slats to the side rails of the bed; they were falling out all the time otherwise. I unscrewed those to take the beds apart for painting and then I rescrewed them in when I put the beds back together.
For dressers, I take the drawers out, but that's all I mess with. I leave the frame of the piece all together.
Oh, I also take hardware off, but that always involves screws, not nails or glue.
Nice work! I love the pillow covers on Sonia's bed, especially the ones with the white background with the bicycle pattern on it. Where did you get them?
Thank you! Sonia made those herself, with a friend of mine (the same friend who taught Sonia how to knit, actually. She's the one I visited in Ohio last summer: All about Ohio! (with eleventy pictures)
They turned out so great, I'm inspired to haul out my painting supplies for a project or two!
I'm thinking I might be painting two beds in the near future. One is wood and one is an old-fashioned metal bed, which we found in a junk store years ago and is currently white.
Yours look very nice now and it's great that your kids are learning the painting ropes. We bought some truly ugly but solid 1960's unmatched furniture for my daughter's college apartment bedroom (in the 2000's). With paint and new handles on the dresser and night stand, her roommates thought it was all so cute! Paint can do a lot, I tell you.
Ooh, fun! I be your transformations will be great.
Did you spray paint the metal bed? I've always sprayed metal surfaces, but I brush/roll wood furniture.
Yes, definitely sprayed it. I can't get a smooth finish on metal any other way.
Same...spray paint works so well on metal!
They look lovely! That's a nice long and busy life for those beds.
You may have another post where you address this. If you do, can you please point me in that direction? I apologize in advance if this is a really dumb question. If you’re painting different shades of wood the same color will it all look the same when you’re finished? All of our bedroom furniture is a mismatched hodgepodge, trending toward much darker finishes. If I go with white, or some other pastel, will it all look the same?
Also, it seems to rain every weekend, which is the only time I could do it. We have a carport. Is that adequate for the drying?
Yep, it will all look the same once you paint it! If you check out some of the painting projects at the bottom of this post, you can see how I made several different pieces of furniture all white. And same goes for the black furniture I painted.
A carport is fine for drying, but you'd just want to keep an eye on the humidity levels. The can of paint you buy should tell you what humidity levels are acceptable; usually if it's something crazy like 92% humidity, that's not a good day to paint.
Thanks for the heads up about the humidity! I had no idea that could be an issue. We're in NC, so it gets pretty humid. This is sounding like more of a fall project for me.
Fall can definitely be a good time as long as you don't have leaves falling all over your project. Ha.
It gets fairly humid here too in the summer, but some days are better than others. When it's the sort of day where you walk outside and feel like you are in the middle of a wet cloud, that is not a good day for painting or for sanding (the surface is too sticky to even sand!)