Fire Truck bed is DONE!

UPDATE - 3/5/2012 - Ana posted the plans on her site and on Facebook today!!!  For those that found their way over here via one of those, welcome and thanks for stopping by!  Here is the link to the NEW Fire Truck Bed plans on Ana's site, good luck and please share if you do build one! 

Fire Truck Bed Plans

I finally finished the Fire Truck bed over the weekend. The only thing left to do is wire up the lights, which will be done in a couple weeks with the help of a friend who is good at that sort of thing.

I took the plans for Ana's Playhouse Loft Bed With Stairs and modified it to the fire truck design I built. The fire truck bed is based on this picture I found online. As you can tell, I made some changes to the plans; the biggest being that I moved the stairs to the other side. Check out the links below for posts on step-by-step build pictures and notes if interested.  Thanks for looking!

After we get the lights wired, there will be a toggle switch by the steering wheel (pic below) to turn on the lights. Also will be adding 2 red beacon lights.

The "lights" & "grill" are made of wood and just painted. I used chrome spray paint for the grill and the bumper. The "23" is Hut's birthday so went with that for the truck number. I also bought diamond plate tape on eBay to use as a pinstripe.

This picture did not turn out very well, but I ordered these online and was able to customize the one with Hut's name and got one with Arkansas on it.

Had to get a Razorback to put on there of course! You can see some more of the diamond plate tape I used.

The stairs were the most challenging for me. I went back and forth on what kind of hinges I wanted to use and finally just went with the basic ones and getting them straight and lined up took some time. We plan to use the storage for his clothes, since we lost his dresser due to space. For the diamond plate, I bought 3 feet of diamond plate vinyl on eBay and just stuck it on there. Turned out great and was the look I was going for.

The magnet board.

I purchased the steering wheel off of eBay. It is for a outdoor play set, but with a little piece of 4x4 to mount it to, it works great. The siren on the right is taken from one of Hut's toy fire trucks and I built the box to hold the buttons and speaker. This is the wall by the stairs, I put a divider in the back stair so that we could put a little cubby that is accessible from the inside to put games, books, etc...

I found these firemen hats online. They have a light and siren, perfect accessory for the bed! I put up a couple hooks so they can hang up on the inside.

After the animals took over!

Overall, I am very happy with how it turned out. It took a while to build due to the sheer size, modifications, and weather kept getting too cold to go out and work on it. I would say we spent about $500 to build the bed with all the accessories.

I cannot thank Ana White enough for posting all the plans that she does on her website. Without it, this bed would not have been possible. I have looked online everywhere and cannot find anything like this of course, and the fire truck beds that I did find are not what I had in my mind. If you haven't checked out her site, please do, she has 100's of plans on there and maybe you can find something you would like to build!?

Thanks for looking!

STEP BY STEP LINKS:

Part I - Framing

Part II - MDF

Part III - Dry Assembly

Part IV - Accessories

Part V - Painting